She was always sorriest for the babies, they were so helpless, and the only times she was really angry were when she saw them neglected or starved or made drunk. Then she was like a tigress, and the people fled before her. "Poor wee helpless things," she would say as she picked them up and thought of the way the white babies at home were cared for. She saw in the tiniest babe one for whom Jesus died; and she loved them all, and washed them and nursed them, and sang to them day and night. There was no cradle in the Mission House, but something better. Ma's bed was in the middle of the room, and around it were hammocks slung to the roof, from each of which a cord was hung. In these were placed the babies, and if any one became wakeful during the night and cried, she would pull the string and set its hammock swinging, and soon the little one was slumbering again. Sometimes she had to look after half a dozen or more at once, and two or three hammocks would be going at the same time. With many she had a hard struggle, but never grudged any trouble to make them well. She would come home late after a long day's tramp in the forest, tired and hungry and sleepy, and send Janie to bed and stay up herself and tend the sick and suffering ones. You can fancy her there alone in the mud-house in the forest in the quiet hours of the night, bending over a wasted form, watching the pain in its eyes with tears in her own, giving it medicine, soothing it, and seeking to make it comfy, and beside her the pale dark shape of Death, with its grim smile, waiting for another victim. Ma sometimes won the child from the grave; sometimes she failed, and then she was very sad. But she could not help it. The people believed that sickness was caused by evil spirits, and most of the children that came to her were already dying and beyond her love and skill. When they closed their eyes she dressed them in a pinafore and put them in a box covered with white flowers, and buried them in her children's cemetery. Some women who called at Ma's yard were gossiping about the day's marketing, when one said it was funny that a baby should live after being five days and six nights in the bush. "What's that?" demanded Ma. "What do you mean?" "Nothing, Ma. The girl baby that was thrown away because the mother is dead is still alive, for we heard her crying as we came along this morning." Ma jumped up and went flying to the spot. She found the waif on some waste ground, terribly thin and eaten by insects and crying feebly. Taking her home Ma laid her in a big calabash and brooded over her with tender care, and by and by she recovered, and became healthy and pretty. "The child of wonder," the people called her; but Ma named her Mary, after herself, and she became one of her house-children, and stayed with her until she married. Twins gave Ma the sorest time. The people believed that all sorts of troubles would come to them if these were allowed to live. Ma laughed at them.