The friends who had known her long were noticing that a new softness and graciousness were stealing into her life. She never grew commonplace, and was original as ever, but her character was mellowing, and her love and humility becoming even more marked. "Love will overcome all," was her belief, and love, for her, included all the qualities of the Christian faith--simplicity, kindness, patience, charity, selflessness, confidence, hope. In herself she was conscious of many faults. "I don't half live up to the ideal missionary life," she said, with a sigh. "It is not easier to be a saint here than at home. We are very human, and not goody-goody at all." Often she was deep in the valley of humiliation over hasty words spoken and opportunities of service let slip. But she was saved from depression by her sense of humour. She laughed and dared the devil. Of one who had just come out she wrote: "She is very serious, and will take life and work more in the sense of tasks than of a glad free life ... we want one to laugh, to hitch on to the yoke, and joke over all that we don't like." She also became less uncompromising in her views. "My opinions," she acknowledged, "may not just suit every one, and it is possible other people may be right and I far wrong.... But although we differ amongst ourselves, and some things differentiate our work, we are all in full friendship and sympathy with one another." It was not possible for self-abnegation to go farther than it did in her case. She was unable to see that she had done anything out of the common. "I have lived my life very quietly and in a very natural and humble way," she would say, and all the credit of her work was given to God. "It isn't Mary Slessor doing anything, but Something outside of her altogether uses her as her small ability allows." She did not say "my plan," or "my scheme"--if she did she checked herself and said, "What God wants me to do." And she always paid generous tribute to her girls, who, she said, did more than she did, though no one counted it to them. She was distressed to receive letters praising her. One who saw her go out from Scotland to her life-work, and had lovingly followed her career ever since, wrote saying that her reward would be a starry crown in the glory land, and her reply was, "_What would I do with starry crowns except to cast them at His feet?_"