Once more he appealed to his missionary guide; this latest one, the last of the five men to whom Pastor Drury had written before J.W. had set out on his travels.  Could he show his visitor a little of missionary work in village environment?

“Surely.  Nothing easier,” the district superintendent said.  “We’ll jump into my Ford—­great thing for India, the Ford; and still greater for us missionaries—­and we’ll go a-villaging.”

The village of their quest once reached, the Ford drew up before a neat brick house built around three sides of a courtyard, with verandas on the court side.  This was no usual mud hut, but a house, and a parsonage withal.  Here lived the Indian village preacher and his family.  The preacher’s wife was neatly dressed and capable; the children clean and well-mannered.  The room had its table, and on the table books.  That meant nothing to J.W., but the superintendent gave him to understand that a table with books in an Indian village house was comparable in its rarity to a small-town American home with a pipe organ and a butler!

The lunch of native food seemed delicious, if it was “hot,” to J.W.’s healthy appetite, and if he had not seen over how tiny a fire it had been prepared he would have credited the smiling housewife with a lavishly equipped kitchen.

People began to drop in.  It was somewhat disconcerting to the visitor, to see these callers squatting on their heels, talking one to another, but watching him continually out of the corners of their eyes.  One of them, the chaudrie, headman of the village, being introduced to J.W., told him, the superintendent acting as interpreter, how the boys’ school flourished, and how he and other Christians had gone yesterday on an evangelizing visit to another village, not yet Christian, but sure to ask for a teacher soon.

The preacher, in a rather precise, clipped English, asked J.W. if he cared to walk about the village.  “We could go to the mohulla [ward], where most of our Christians live.  They will be most glad to welcome you.”

The way led through dirty, narrow streets, or, rather, let us say, through the spaces between dwellings, to the low-caste quarter.  Here were people of the bottom stratum of Indian life, yet it was a Christian community in the making.  The little school was in session—­a group of fifteen or twenty boys and girls with their teacher.  It was all very crude, but the children read their lessons for the visitor, and did sums on the board, and sang a hymn which the pastor had composed, and recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third psalm.

“These,” said the pastor, “are the children of a people which for a thousand years has not known how to read or write.  Yet see how they learn.”

“Yes,” the superintendent agreed, “but that isn’t the best of it, as you know.  They are untouchables now, but even caste, which is stronger than death, yields to education.  Once these boys and girls have an education they cannot be ignored or kept down.  They will find a place in the social order.”