156

CHAPTER XIX.
The Garden Missionary Meeting 166

CHAPTER XX.
Cousin Alice's Zenana Work 177

CHAPTER XXI.
Rosa Stevenson's Sister 189

A MISSIONARY TWIG.

CHAPTER I.

EDITH TRIES TO EXPLAIN.

"I do think Edith is the queerest girl I ever saw in all my life!" said
Marty Ashford.

"Don't jump up and down behind my chair that way, Marty," said her
mother; "you shake me so that I can scarcely hold my needle. What does
Edith do that is so queer?"

"Oh, she's always putting ten into things."

"Putting ten into things?"

"Yes'm. I mean when she gets any money she always says ten will go into
it so many times, and then she takes a tenth of it--you know we learn
about tenths in fractions at school--and goes and puts it in a blue box
she has."

"I should call that taking ten out of things."

"Well, whatever it is, that's what she does. Every time she gets ten
cents she puts one cent in her blue box."

"What does she do if she only gets five cents?"

"Oh, she keeps it very carefully till she gets another five, and then
she takes her tenth out of it. And would you believe it, when we were
all at Asbury Park last summer--"

"Marty," interrupted her mother, "can't you tell me just as well sitting
still? You fidget so that you make me dreadfully nervous. Can't you sit
still?"

"I don't believe I can, but I'll try real hard," said Marty, crowding
herself into Freddie's little rocking-chair and clasping her arms around
her knees, as if to hold herself still.

"Well, what about Asbury Park?" Mrs. Ashford asked.

"Why, when we were at Asbury Park and Edith's father was going to New
York, he gave her a whole dollar to do what she pleased with. Now you
know it would be the easiest thing in the world to spend a dollar there.
I could spend it just as easy as anything."

"I dare say you could," said Mrs. Ashford, laughing.

"And any way you know it was vacation, and even if you save tenths other
times you oughtn't to feel as if you must do it in vacation. But Edith
had to go and get her dollar changed and put ten cents of it in the old
blue box."

"So she would not take a vacation from her tenths?"

"No, indeed. And the other day when her uncle from Baltimore was here,
he gave her fifty cents, and it would just pay for a perfectly lovely
paintbox that she wants; but she couldn't buy it because five cents of
the fifty was tenths; and no