Edith got me started, haven't I? I've
learned a good deal about missions, and I find it a great deal easier to
give money regularly now than when I began. Don't you remember how at
first I either wanted to give every cent I had or else not to give
anything? But I found out that wasn't the best way to do."

"And another thing," said Mrs. Ashford, "you have been the means of some
of the rest of us taking steps. Seeing how well your systematic giving
is working, I have started in to do the same way."

"Oh! _have_ you, mamma?" exclaimed Marty. "Are you going to have a box
for tenths? How delightful!"

"No, not a box--my square Russia-leather pocketbook. And not tenths
exactly, but what you call the New Testament way."

"That's just lovely!" said Marty, caressing her. "I'm so glad. So we'll
both be mission workers the rest of our lives, wont we?"

"With God's help, we will," replied her mother.

"And p'r'aps dear little Freddie will begin, too, when he gets old
enough. You know there are boy bands. But where is Freddie? He was here
when I came in."

Just then a high-pitched little voice from the next room called, "Whoop!
Marty!"

"There he is. I wonder what sort of a funny place he's hiding in this
time," said Marty, laughing and running to see.

Freddie had taken one of his papa's large handkerchiefs out of the lower
drawer of the bureau, and spreading it out over his head was standing in
the middle of the room, hiding. How he laughed when Marty found him!

Soon after Mrs. Ashford and Marty began studying the Bible with the help
of the concordance, they agreed that it would be pleasant to read a
chapter together every night before Marty went to bed. Sometimes she was
too sleepy to read more than a few verses, but generally she tried to
get ready in good time so that she would be wide enough awake to read a
whole chapter, unless it was a very long one.

They were reading in Luke's Gospel now, but the evening of this day
Marty said,

"Mamma, mayn't we read that chapter that has in it, 'Here am I; send
me'? Miss Stevenson read that verse to us to-day when she was talking
about us going, any of us. Do you know where it is?"

"I think I can find it pretty easily," Mrs. Ashford replied. "I know it
is in Isaiah. Here it is--the sixth chapter."

They read it, and the eighth verse coming to Marty, she read slowly and
reverently,

"Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who
will go for us