She tried to find some Hindu woman who would teach her. But there was not one. There were Zenana missionaries, but her friends were terribly frightened to let them near her. “They will teach you this new religion about Jesus,” they said. But Sooboo was so eager to learn to read and so sure of her own faith in the Hindu gods that she said, “What they teach me about that will go in at one ear and out at the other.” Sooboo had said “that.” She meant the religion of the foreigners. She did not know that the Christians had a real living King whom they knew and obeyed. She thought they had just another set of rules about life and stories of gods who could be worshipped but who sat apart and had no care for the men and women who served them. When she saw the King of India she knew Him to be her King, and the thought of Him entered deep into her heart. At first she hoped that she might stay at home and win her father and the others there to serve Christ too. His service was so wonderful to her, so different from the worship of the idols and so immensely better, that she could not believe that those she loved so well, and whom she honoured, would not serve Him too if they could only see Him. But she did not know how fiercely her family hated the religion of the foreigner. They tried every way they could to make her yield, and when their pleading and their caresses failed, they began to ill-use her. But she did not flinch. She only thought she must be patient and wait till those whom she loved saw Jesus Christ for themselves. But one night she heard an awful thing. She heard that her people were planning to send her away to a far distant city to make her a priestess in an idol temple there. She knew too well that if they took her there, she would be forced to worship the god and to take part in rites that were hateful to her, or else to die. She had been willing to bear pain and unkindness in the hope that she might win her friends to Christ, but she could not yield to this. So one night she left her father’s house and reached the home of the missionaries in safety. She would not yield to the entreaties of her friends who came to seek her, though she still loved them, and they could not force her to go back, for she was old enough to be free by law to decide for herself. You remember the golden image of Sooboo that was being made to stand in the Hindu temple. There was another image made of Sooboo now. It was not made of gold, and it was large--as large as Sooboo herself. When it was finished it was not set up in a temple. It was laid on a stretcher like a dead body, and carried through the streets of Madras and Sooboo’s father and brothers wailed out as they carried it, “Sooboo is dead!” “Sooboo is dead!” And Sooboo listened as they passed along. She heard the voices of those she loved wailing out this terrible dirge, and in her misery she covered her ears with her hands.