Julia, one of our original school-girls, became very useful to me at this time. We had taken her home with us in '59, and sent her to a training-school for teachers in Dublin, so that she was quite competent on our return to take the management of the girls' school. We had eight girls in the house, and a few day-scholars from the town. Lessons used to go on in a room on the basement, where of course I was superintendent, and they learnt sewing in the afternoon. Julia was a very gentle mistress, and I was feeling very happy about my girls, when I found to my sorrow that Julia had an admirer, and I must make up my mind to part with my child who had lived with us since she was four years old. Such natural events must not be considered trials, but the difficulty of replacing her was insuperable. I was obliged at last to send my girls to Mrs. Abe, at the Quop Station, for I was too often away in the mission-boat with the Bishop to keep them at the mission-house. This was not until 1865, however. Poor Mildred felt parting with "her girls," as she called them, very much, and often said, "Mamma, if Sarah and Fanny might come back we would never, never quarrel any more." Are not such pricks of conscience common to us all when our dear ones leave us? But the past never returns! In 1863, the Bishop built a charming little yawl for mission work. The _Fanny_ was just suited, from her light draught of water, to cross the bars of the rivers, and she was a very good sea-boat too. Not only was she wanted to take the Bishop on his missionary, tours, but she brought the missionaries to Sarawak when, they came for ordinations, or the annual synod; also when they were sick, and required medical aid or change. Very few clergymen know much about the management of boats, and native crafts are very unsafe, so that until the Bishop had a yacht many accidents used to occur, not actually dangerous, for the natives swim like fishes, but drenchings and loss of goods from the upsetting of boats. In the north-east monsoon _Fanny_ was thatched over and laid snugly up a creek, but all the south-west monsoon she was very useful; and no one wanted to travel about, if they could help it, during the wet tempestuous weather which prevailed from November to March.