ciating with foreigners for all eternity. Until two years ago she
was a healthy, sturdy woman, scarcely feeling the weight of her seventy
years. A slight dimness of eyesight caused her to raise her charges for
dressmaking on the plea, peculiar to Chinese logic, that old age made
her movements slower and more uncertain, and whereas three days were
once sufficient to make a garment, and make it well, now after six days'
work it was still far less well finished off than formerly. So we have
submitted to extra charges for inferior work, for old acquaintance'
sake.

Then a long and painful illness laid "Puppy's mother" low, and for
months we did not think that she could recover. Nevertheless, her
excellent constitution did finally assert itself, and now she is walking
about again, leaning on a stick and on the shoulder of a small
grandchild, one of Puppy's offspring. She is curiously softened, and
told us once that she had endeavoured to pray, but could not remember
the sentences we had taught her.

Time, age, and weakness work many transformations, and we feel as though
the veil of flesh were wearing thinner, and the spirit within feeling
its way out of gross darkness towards the light.

* * * * *

Mrs. Deh had fallen so low through opium, that it was to save her from
positive starvation that we admitted her to our household once more. She
had been one of the failures of our Women's Refuge, and had sunk deep
into the degradation which accompanies opium smoking in a woman's life,
pressed as she finds herself to raise the money necessary for the price
of her drug.

[Illustration: "PUPPY" AND HER MOTHER.

_To face page 218._]

For three years she kept herself respectable under our roof, living
amongst Christian women and joining in their prayers and hymn, night and
morning, but not a trace of the softened, repentant spirit could one
see, and finally a distinct retrograde movement accompanied with
physical disability forced us to send her home. I despair of Mrs. Deh
except when I look into the face of her daughter, the good, pure girl
whose life's prayer it is that her mother should be saved. She cannot
admit that this one thing she hopes for on earth should not be granted
to her. Her eyes are always full of tears when she speaks of her mother,
and when I see them I know they must, with strong entreaty, be pleading
the cause of the poor sinful woman before the Presence of the Divine
Majes