It was to her "one of the reddest of red-letter days," such a day as
only comes at rare intervals, and she fell into the snare, as she said,
"of being carried away with it," with the result that at night she was
down with fever. This kept recurring every alternate night. It was the
harmattan season, in which she always wilted like some delicate flower
in the sun, and she grew so limp and fragile that she could not sit up.
She felt that she would be compelled to go home in the summer with the
Macgregors, but the idea frightened her, chiefly because of the stir
that had been caused by the honour she had received. "I dare not appear
at home after all this publicity," she said. "I simply could not face
the music." As she recovered a little she superintended the work of the
girls outside, and was amused at the way her advice was now received.
"Jean and Annie do not hesitate to set it aside quietly in their
superior way; it often works out better than mine, truth to tell--
though I say it does so by accident!" This was a different house-mother
from the one who ruled years before.
In one of her fever nights, tossing in semi-delirium, she had a vision.
She had been following the Chapman-Alexander Mission in Glasgow with
keen interest, and in the long watches her excited brain continued to
dwell on the meetings. She dreamt, or imagined, that out of gratitude
for what had been accomplished, two young Glasgow engineers had taken a
six months' holiday, and come out with their motor car to Calabar. They
spent their days running up and down the Government Road through
Ibibio, singing and giving evangelistic addresses, she interpreting,
the girls, who were packed into the cars, doing the catering and
cooking, and the Government Rest Houses providing the lodging. "What a
night it was!" she wrote. "The bairns were afraid, for I was babbling
more than usual, but to me it was as real as if it had all happened. We
ran backwards and forwards between Itu and Ikpe, spending alternate
Sundays with the Churches, and taking Miss Peacock to her outstations,
and visiting Miss Welsh, It was magnificent."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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