of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
please," said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of
the problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors
in age and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
"accountability of the heathen."

"It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away," said Candace. "It's so
seldom you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with
only Clara Belle and Susan good in it."

"And numbers count for so much," continued Alice. "My grandmother says
if missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises
them to come back to America and take up some other work."

"I know," Rebecca corroborated; "and it's the same with revivalists. At
the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to
Mr. Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful
success in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in
a month, he said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished
fractions, so I asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be
converted. He laughed and said it was just the other way; that the man
was a third converted. Then he explained that if you were trying to
convince a person of his sin on a Monday, and couldn't quite finish by
sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to sit up all night with him, and
perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd begin again on Tuesday, and
you couldn't say just which day he was converted, because it would be
two thirds on Monday and one third on Tuesday."

"Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
things of us girls, new beginners," suggested Emma Jane, who was being
constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. "I think it's awful
rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills,
I s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions."

"Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?"
asked Persis.

"Oh! We must go alone," decided Rebecca; "it would be much more refined
and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get
a subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try
and convert people when we're none of us even church me