rs are
carrying on the work of Empire, or the greater work of the gospel.

Often one of these women is the only white person of her sex for
hundreds of miles. Perhaps she is the first who has ever set foot in the
region wherein she lives. Yet her courage does not fail. When, as
sometimes she does, she writes a book describing her adventures, it is
sure to be full of high spirits and amusing descriptions of the
primitive methods of cooking and housekeeping to which she must submit.
The other side of the picture, the loneliness, the intense heat or cold,
the mosquitoes or other pests, the compulsion, through absence of
assistance, to do what at home could be done by a servant--all this is
absent.

Women may have changed, but certainly woman in the difficult places of
the Empire, whether she be missionary, squatter, or consul's wife, has
lost nothing in courage, in perseverance, in cheerful or even smiling
submission to hard conditions.

[Sidenote: A rural story this--of adventurous youngsters and a pathetic
figure that won their sympathy.]

Poor Jane's Brother

BY

MARIE F. SALTON

Ever since the twins could remember Poor Jane had lived in the village.
In fact, she had lived there all her life, though one could not expect
the twins to remember that, for they were very young indeed, and Poor
Jane was quite old.

Poor Jane did not dress like other folks. Her boots were so large and
sloppy that her feet seemed to shake about in them, and she shuffled
along the ground when she walked. These boots could never have been
cleaned since Jane had had them, and the twins firmly believed that they
always had been that queer dust-colour, until one day Nan told them that
when they were quite new they were black and shiny like ordinary boots.

Poor Jane always wore a brown, muddy, gingham skirt, frayed and
tattered, and the torn pieces hung like a frill from her knees to the
tops of her dust-coloured boots. Over her chest she wore a dark-grey
woollen cross-over, and on her head was a dirty shawl, which hung down
her back, and was pinned across her breast. Little straw-like wisps of
straight brown hair stuck out from under the shawl over her forehead
and ears. Her face was dried up and shrivelled, and her cheek-bones were
so sharp that they tried to prick through the skin.

Poor Jane did not often wash, so her wrinkles, and what Dumpty called
her "laughing lines," were marked quite black with dirt. Her lips were
not