I shouldn’t have thought that even Humph could have taken so long over one bit of toast, but I expect he did it to pay me out; it was all frizzly and smelt most delicious. I sat there, though, and never moved except when I gave the little ones more. I couldn’t eat a single mouthful myself. Even that didn’t make me cross. I said in the nicest way at the end, “And now, children, we’ll have grace.” Well, you see, the worst of it was we don’t generally say grace except at dinner, so Humph answered directly, “Why should we? We never do,” and Teddy copies every one, so he shouted out, too, “Sha’n’t; we never do.” As for Violet, she just looked astonished. “My dear children,” I said most exactly like the clergyman, “we are certainly going to have grace, and I shall say it,” but before I could begin Humphrey roared out, “If we have gwace I shall say it, because I’m a man.” It was dreadfully silly; just as if he could, when besides being younger, he was only a heathen! I tried to explain this to him kindly, I really did, but he wouldn’t understand. So it ended in our both shouting out, “For what we have received the Lord make us truly thankful,” at the tops of our voices, with our hands over our ears, which didn’t seem quite right, and suddenly in the middle the bread-and-butter plate fell off my lap--crash! It was broken to little bits. That was the first disagreeable thing that happened, for not even missionaries like their pocket-money to be stopped for two weeks, but there were lots more to come. And it wasn’t only big things that were horrid, being a missionary seemed to make everybody cross the whole day long. Now there was Father. You see, I was trying hard to be good myself, besides improving the Poor Heathens, so I’d settled to count ten every time before I spoke, and then I’d not be led into evil and profane discourse. I got the idea out of a book I’d been reading. Well, instead of liking it, Father used to get dreadfully vexed; the trouble was that he generally asked me the question again before I got to ten, and then I had to start counting all over again, so it was quite a long time sometimes before I could answer. I did think it seemed rather silly myself, when he’d only asked me something like, “Have you been out to-day?” because it wasn’t likely that I should have replied anything very dreadful. But in the book it said that one can never tell, and that habit is everything. I did wish that Father hadn’t thought me muttering and sulky.