When the German gentleman heard that he was very nice, Humph said. Of course he must have known that people can live longer than that without food on desert islands and places, though Humph was really frightened about it. He took hold of Humph’s hand and said, “_Ach!_ then we must go quickly and ask that the little sister may be forgiven.” I believe he liked boys better than girls anyway, which does seem funny. The first thing I knew of all this, though, was Father coming up to my room. He said in quite a different way, “Cheer up, Molly, I hear it was only a mistake. You must be more discreet in your sisterly admonitions though.” It made me feel much better. I went down and told the German gentleman that I was sorry I’d seemed rude. He was all right, but things weren’t really comfortable until he and Father went away again the next day. I didn’t do any more missionarying after that though; it seemed to be too dangerous. It was a comfort to stop. Besides, the next week I got a letter from Mother, explaining that the clergyman couldn’t have meant it like that at all, because the chief thing if you want to have a good influence over people is that they should be fond of you, so a plan that prevents that must be a mistake. She said, too, that people didn’t generally have a good influence unless it was unconscious, so my best way was just to leave the others alone and try and be good myself. But she said I needn’t worry too much even over that (she seemed to guess all about my finings and hittings though I’d never told her). She said if I just loved people and tried to make them happy, I’d find in the end that I had been good. At the bottom of the letter, just before the kisses, there was a bit that surprised me very much. It was lovely; I don’t much like to say it. Mother said that I’d always been a good influence and a help to her, even though I hadn’t tried to be a missionary. She said that once when she was speaking to Teddy about telling stories (he does sometimes, you see, because he’s so little), she said to him that heroes never told untruths, and he answered at once and very proudly, “Nor does Molly, either.” It did make me feel funny inside. VI A FIRST NIGHT (Reprinted from _Little Folks_ by kind permission) I’ll never do any more plays, never. It would be all very well if one could act all the parts oneself, but making the others learn theirs was awful. Besides, you wouldn’t believe that the Corpse could give so much trouble. We got it up while Mother was still away in Algiers, and that was the first mistake. But we’d often had acting games before, and I never thought that this would be so much harder. The idea of doing it came into my head one day at lesson time, and it seemed perfectly splendid, so I pinched Humphrey directly, and whispered, “We are going to act a real play with refreshments and a curtain. I shall write it.”