"Well," said John, a little ruefully, "you know you _did_ try for a month after you first came, but it was such a failure that you gave it up. You couldn’t stand the heat of the cookhouse, or manage the cook, or do the accounts in calico for the things you bought. And—you don’t know much about cooking. Why should you? You’re a first-class teacher. And then, you know, you were so set at first on studying—studying botany—and painting pictures. I thought, even, you might write for the Mission Magazine, like Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Baxter...." _Lucy_: "But they always want you to write goody goody and bring in the Lord at every turn and make out the black people to be quite different from what they are—Somehow I couldn’t fall in with their style, it’s so humbugging——" _John_: "Well, then, write for other magazines, worldly ones if you like. I’m sure you could write well—you used to make up beautiful poetry before we were married, and you’ve had thrilling enough experiences on the way up. It isn’t every missionary’s wife who’s had a lion trying to get into her tent——" _Lucy_: "The thought of _that_ journey _still_ makes me sick. And yet I used to think I should adore African travel—" (An ungrateful thought flashed through her mind: "so I should, with—with—some people"). "Besides, if I told the true story—bugs, ants, snakes, rotting corpses, and all—it might stop other missionary women from coming out. No. I can’t write anything. I _do_ make collections of flowers, but you won’t let me go far from the Station to botanize and you’re always too busy to come with me. As to painting, it’s either too wet, or too hot, or too something. And then you hinted once I shouldn’t take a half-holiday every day but help some one else in their work, so I give up some of my time to Mr. Bayley.... No, I won’t call him ’Brother Bayley,’ it’s so silly, all this brother and sister business"—(a short pause and a sudden impulse). "John! Couldn’t you take me home next dry season—and get them to give you work at home—? Or" (noting his look of dismay) "send me home to Mother and join me there later on, when your leave is due?..." _John_: "It would just _break my heart_ either to part with you or to throw up my missionary career...." _Lucy_: "Well, then, could I go on an itinerary—as you call it—with you? Not be cooped up here with that intolerable Ann when you three men go off on a round of preaching. I’d promise not to mind anything—snakes, ants, lions, or even the Masai. Perhaps I might get to enjoy Africa that way without all this intolerable religion...." _John_: "_Lucy!_..."