e asked:

"Ma, have you come to stay?"

"No, not yet."

"Oh, Ma, when are you coming?"

What could she reply? How could she leave the work at Use? She begged
the Church to send up other ladies, but the months passed, and meanwhile
two churches were ready in the district, and the people were beseeching
her to come.

"It's another call," she said, "and I must obey. I'm an old woman and
not very fit, but I'll do my best, and I'll carry on the work at Use
too. No more idleness for me!"

So up and down the Creek she went. The journey always took the best part
of two days. A canoe, with ten paddlers, was sent down from Ikpe to the
beach near Itu. What a bustle there was at Use before everything was
ready! Then the house had to be shut up. This was done by nailing the
windows, and building in the doorways with strips of wood and clay.

In the afternoon the household set off, Ma sitting in the centre of the
canoe on a chair, and the children and babies round her, and the yellow
cat in its bag at her feet. When it grew dark they landed at some
village and spent the night, and before daybreak at four o'clock they
were off again. Ma did not like the bit which was haunted by hippos.
"But," she would say, "they haven't touched me yet; they just push up
their ugly heads and stare at me."

When the sun became strong and they were all hot and tired they went
ashore at a clearing, and the paddlers lit a fire and cooked some food,
Ma joking all the time to keep everybody happy. Ikpe beach was reached
about four in the afternoon, and there was still a long walk before
them, and it was a very weary company that lay down to rest.

The paddlers were just the wild boys of Ikpe, very good-hearted under
all their badness, as Ma told the Sunday School children of Wellington
Church, Glasgow:

They are ungrudging hard workers too. They paddle the whole day,
singing as merrily as if the sun were not beating on them like a
blazing fire. When we came up a month ago we had such a heavy
load of timber for building purposes that they could hardly get
a seat. One chief on the road asked me to put a part of it at
his beach as they would never be able to take it up, but the
boys sturdily answered, "The canoe is good, let us go on."

They pulled eight hours on end without stopping to eat a bite.
About seven o'clock we all lay down, after holding worship in
the canoe, and didn't they sing! And then the mo