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136 Their mother found them one day bending over the cradle, arguing as to why the baby cried.

Ronald said, "She has no teeth, for that reason she cries."

Robert said, "She has no hair, for that reason she cries."

And Ronald finished, "She has no English, for that reason she cries."

I am not the only visitor at Takai. There are two missionary ladies here, resting after a strenuous time in some famine district. One is tall and stout, the other is short and thin; both have drab-coloured faces and straight mouse-coloured hair; both wear eye-glasses and sort of up and down dresses—the very best of women one feels sure, but oh! so difficult. You know my weakness for making people like me, but these dear ladies will have none of me, charm I never so wisely. Everything I do meets with their disapproval—how well I see it in their averted, spectacled eyes! I talk too much, laugh too much, tell foolish tales, mimic my elders and betters, and—worst sin of all—I have never read, never even heard of, the Missionary Magazine.

Something you said in your last letter, some allusion to religion, I didn't quite like, and at any other time I would have written you a sermon