he
uncomforted places in her heart become healed, for the touch of a little
child is very healing. If she is willing to forget herself and live for
that little child, something new springs up within her; she does not
understand it, but those who watch her know that all is well. Sometimes
long afterwards she reads her own heart's story and opens it to us. "I
was torn with longing for my home. I dreamed night after night about it,
and I used to waken just wild to run back. And yet I knew if I had, it
would have been destruction to my soul. And then the baby came, and you
put her into my arms, and she grew into my heart, and she took away all
that feeling, till I forgot I ever had it." This was the story of one, a
young wife, for whom the natural joys of home can never be. But if there
is selfishness or slackness or a weak desire to drift along in easiness,
taking all and giving nothing, things are otherwise. For such the
nurseries hold nothing but noise and interruptions. We ask to be spared
from such as these. Or if they come, may they be inspired by the
constraining love of Christ and "The Glory of the Usual."

FOOTNOTE:

[E] _Overweights of Joy_, ch. xxiii. Suhinie left the nursery for a few
hours' rest at noon on February 2, 1910. She fell asleep, to awaken in
heaven.

CHAPTER XXV

The Little Accals

But Thou didst reckon, when at first
Thy word our hearts and hands did crave,
What it would come to at the worst
To save.
Perpetual knockings at Thy door,
Tears sullying Thy transparent rooms.

[Illustration: THREE LITTLE ACCALS.]

THESE lines come with insistence as I look at the little Accals, who
follow in order after the Accals, convert children, most of them, now
growing up to helpfulness. If part of the story of one such young girl
is told, it may help those to whom such tales are unfamiliar to
understand and to care.

December 16, 1903, was spent by three of us in a rest-house on the
outskirts of a Hindu town. We were on our way to Dohnavur from Madras,
where we had seen Mr. and Mrs. Walker off for England. The two days'
journey had left us somewhat weary; and yet we were strong in hope that
day, for we knew there was special thought for us on board ship and at
home, and something special was being asked as a birthday gift of joy.
Arulai (Star) and Preena (the Elf), the two who were with me, were full
of expectation. The day