"I will depend," she
said, "a good deal upon you."
It was Alicia's fate to meet the Archdeacon again that evening at
dinner. "And is she really throwing her heart into the work?" asked that
dignitary, referring to Miss Howe.
"Oh, I think so," Alicia said; "Yes."
CHAPTER XXVI.
The labours of the Baker Institution and of the Clarke Mission were very
different in scope, so much so that if they had been secular bodies
working for profit there would have been hardly a point of contact
between them. As it was, they made one, drawing together in affiliation
for the comfort of mutual support in a heathen country where all the
other Englishmen wrote reports, drilled troops, or played polo, with all
the other Englishwomen in the corresponding female parts. Doubtless the
little communities prayed for each other. One may imagine, not
profanely, their petitions rising on either side of the heedless,
multitudinous, idolatrous city, and meeting at some point in the purer
air above the yellow dust-haze. I am not aware that they held any other
mutual duty or privilege, but this bond was known and enabled people
whose conscience pricked them in that direction to give little garden
teas to which they invited Clarke Brothers and Baker Sisters, secure in
doing a benevolent thing and at the same time embarrassing nobody,
except, possibly, the Archdeacon, who was officially exposed to being
asked as well and had no right to complain.
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