John himself makes a hearty breakfast, but glances occasionally at Lucy’s silent abstemiousness. At last Ann, the housekeeper, rises after Brothers Bayley and Anderson have left the table for their work, and says to Lucy: "Don’t sit too long over your food because I want Priscilla and Florence to clear away, wash up and then come to me...." She goes out. "Not well, Lucy, this morning?" says John, who is beginning to despair about her fitting in to mission life. The conviction which he often repels takes him now with an ache. He loves the work himself, not only the converting these savages to a better mode of life, but the unrealized colonization about the whole business, the planting of fruit trees, the increase of flocks and herds, the freedom from civilization’s shackles and class distinctions.... "Oh yes! I’m quite well ... I suppose. Simply not hungry. I daresay I shall make up for it at dinner ... provided Ann leaves me alone and doesn’t nag about eating. I think it’s _such_ bad manners, observing what people do at meal times. I don’t comment on her big appetite or on Anderson’s disgusting way of eating...." "She means very well," replies John, wishing to be fair.... "I daresay she does. She’d have made you a much better wife than I. If I die in my next attack of fever, you ought to marry her ... _I_ shouldn’t mind...." "Now, Lucy, don’t say such dreadful things. You can’t think _how_ they hurt me...." At this moment Priscilla and Florence—pronouncing their imposed baptismal names as "Pilisilla," and "Filórency" in a loud stage conversation they are holding together to conceal the fact that they have rapidly escheated a half-basin-full of sugar—come in to clear away, and John leads Lucy with an arm round her waist back to their own quarters. "Cheer up, old girl! You haven’t had fever now for three months and you’re getting your good looks back. And making splendid progress with your teaching.... You’re beginning to master the language...." It is eleven o’clock in the morning and the Girls School at Hangodi, with its mud walls of wattle and daub and its thatch of grass and palm mid-ribs, is hot to the extent of eighty degrees Fahrenheit. Despite the open door (for the small glass-paned windows are not made to open) the atmosphere is close and redolent of perspiring Negroes. Lucy raises her eyes from her desk and looks about her as though realizing the scene from a new point of view, without illusion or kindly allowance. At the end of the School-house, opposite to the teacher’s platform and desk, is the entrance-door of heavy planks adzed from native timber. Through the wide-open doorway can be seen a square of sun-baked red clay which refracts a dazzling flame-white effulgence.