It was quite evident that a certain amount of education lay within her own grasp, and quite unlimited possibilities were open to her three daughters. The sinfulness of binding up the feet of girls was touched upon, and a strong determination took form in her mind that her girls should be among the first who would have natural feet in the neighbourhood, in spite of the lurking fear that all three might be left as old maids upon her hands if no man might be found bold enough to risk the disgrace of a wife with normal feet. A short length of white cotton material was procured, and the three little ones were soon free of compressing bandages, each wearing a pair of calico socks and little red-and-yellow shoes, ornamented on the toe with a grinning, whiskered, tiger's face. These girls were all destined to lives of signal usefulness in the Church. Two of them labour still as teachers and evangelists among their own people; the third was early prepared by intense suffering and deep wrongs to be removed by death to the realm where the "wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." THE GREAT FURNACE FOR A GREAT SOUL "Happy the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely. A bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place--his own soul was like that! "Would it reach the hands of his good genius on the opposite side, unruffled and unsoiled?"--WALTER PATER. "To radiate the heat of the affections into a clod, which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip--this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings--most of all in that perpetual _auto-da-fe_ where young womanhood is the sacrifice."--O. W. HOLMES. CHAPTER XI THE GREAT FURNACE FOR A GREAT SOUL BEING THE STORY OF AI DO MRS. FAN'S second daughter came into the world under the shadow of sorrow, for apart from the fact that she was a girl, whereas a boy had been ardently desired, her first lusty yells revealed the fact that she was born with a tooth visible. This was well known by every woman in the village to indicate antagonism to her mother's life, and disaster would surely ensue were she not promptly drowned or thrown out to perish by the riverside. Her fate seemed sealed, but that a woman seeing what a dear little baby she was, was moved with pity, and declared herself willing to take the responsibility of asserting that the child was hers in order that the demons which were ordering these events might be deceived, and thus her real mother would escape the fate which threatened her life, if the baby were not killed.