A. Freckle-faced Little Girl Enlightens the Missionary Woman.

Otago Witness, Issue 1952, 23 July 1891, Page 41

A. Freckle-faced Little Girl Enlightens the Missionary Woman.

" Ma's upstairs changing her dress," eaid a freckle-faced little girl tying her doll's bonnet strings and casting her eye about for a tidy large enough to serve as a shawl for that double-jointed ycung person. "Oh, your mother needn't dress up for me," replied the i female agent of the Missionary Society,' taking a self-satisfied view of herself in the mirror. " Run up and tell her to come down just as she is, in her every day clothes, and not to stand on ceremony." " Oh, but she hasn't got on her every day clothes, tMa was all dressed up in her new brown silk dress, 'cause she expected Miss Dimmond to-day. Miss Dimmond always comes over here to show off her nice things, and ma doesn't mean to be beat. When ma saw you coming she said ' the dickens,' and I guess she was mad about something. Ma said if you saw her new dress she'd have to hear all about the poor heathen, who don't have silk, and you'd ask her for more money to buy hymn books to send 'em. I say, do the nigger ladies use hjmn book leaves to do their hair up to make it frizzy? Ma says she believes that's all the good the books do 'em, If they ever get any books. I wish my doll was a heathen." "Why, you wicked little girl, what do you want of a heathen doll?" inquired the missionary lady, making mental inventory of the new things in the parlour to getjnaterial for a homily on worldly extravagance. "So folks would send her lots of nice things to wear and feel sorry to have her going about naked. Then she would have hair to frizz, and I want a doll with truly hair and eyes that roll up like Deacon Sliderback's when he says amen on Sunday. I ain't a wicked girl neither, 'cause Uncle Diek — you know Uncle Dick, he's been out West and swears awful and smokes all the house — he says I'm a holy terror and he hopes I'll be an angel pretty soon. Mall be down iii a minute, so you needn't take your cloak off. She. said she'd box my ears if I asked you to. Ma's putting on that old dress she had last year, 'cause she said she .didn't want you to think she was able to give much this time, and she needed a new muff worse than the queen of the cannon ball islands needed religion. Uncle Dick says you oughter go to the islands, 'cause you'd be safe there, and the natives 'd'be sorry they was such sinners anybody would send you to 'em. He says he never seen a heathen hungry enough to eat you, 'Jes 'twas a blind one, an' you'd set a blind pagan's teeth on edge.so he'd never haDker atter any more missionary. Uncle Dick's awful funny, and makes pa and ma die laughing sometimes."

" Your Uncle Richard is a bad, depraved wretch, and ought to have remained out West, where his style is appreciated. He sets a horrible example for little girls like you." " Oh, I think he's nice. He showed me how to slide down the -banisters, and he's teaching me to whistle when ma ain't present. That's a pretty cloak you've got, ain't it 1 Do you buy all your good clothes with missionary money ? Ma says you do." Just then the freckle-faced little girl's ma came into the parlour and kissed the missionary lady on the cheek and said she was delighted to see her, and they proceeded to have a real sociable chat. The little girl's ma can't understand why a person who professes to be so charitable as the missionary lady does should go right over to Mrs Dimmond's and say such ill-natured things as she did, and she thinks the missionary is a double-faced gossip.