hould make her all the more loving to the dear
ones at home.

CHAPTER VIII.

"NOT IN THE GOOD TIMES."

One Saturday afternoon as Edith and Marty entered the room where the
meetings of the band were held, half a dozen girls rushed to them,
exclaiming,

"Oh, what do you think! Mary Cresswell has a letter from Mrs. C----!"

How eager they all were to hear that letter! As soon as the opening
exercises were over, Miss Walsh told Mary she might read it. The young
secretary looked quite proud and important as she unfolded the letter,
very tenderly, indeed, for it was written on thin paper, as foreign
letters are, and she was afraid of tearing it.

After speaking very nicely of the letter she had received from them,
Mrs. C---- went on to tell them something about Lahore and about the
school they were interested in. She said:

"You must not imagine a well-arranged schoolroom with desks, maps,
black-boards, and so on. We cannot afford anything like that, and in any
case it would be useless to the kind of pupils we have. We pay a woman a
little for the use of part of the room in which she lives, and while
the school is in session she goes on with her work in one corner. This
room is quite dark, as, having no windows, all the light it receives is
from the door. It has no furniture to speak of. The teacher and pupils
sit on the earth floor."

She then described the dress of the little girls, which certainly did
not appear to be very comfortable for the cool weather they sometimes
have in North India, and said, "No matter how poor and scanty the
clothing, they must have some kind of jewelry, even if it is only glass
or brass bangles. They are anything but cleanly, as they are not taught
in their own homes to be so; besides, some of their customs are
considerably against cleanliness. For instance, they must not wash
themselves at all for a certain length of time after the death of
relatives. So it sometimes happens the children come to school in a very
dirty condition."

These children, Mrs. C---- said, were bright and learned quite readily.
She mentioned some of the hymns and Scripture verses they knew, and some
of the answers they had given to questions she put to them.

"But the great difficulty is," she wrote, "they are taken away from
school so young to be married and thus lost to us. Still it is good to
think that they receive some religious instruction, and matters in
regard to girls and women in India are