* * * * *

In my adoption of Zura the humor was incidental; in Zura’s adoption of Jane it was uppermost.  From the first the girl assumed proprietorship and authority that kept the little gray missionary see-sawing between pleasure and trouble.  By Zura’s merry teasing Jane’s naturally stammering tongue was fatally twisted.  She joked till tears were near; then with swift compunction Jane was caught in arms tender and strong and loved back to happiness.

Like a mother guarding a busy careless child, Zura watched Miss Gray’s comings and goings.  Overshoes and wraps became a special subject of argument.  There was no denying that in the arrangement of Jane’s clothes there was a startling transformation.

My attention was called to this one morning when I heard a merry, audacious voice cry out, “See here, Lady Jinny, do you think it a hallmark of piety to have that hefty safety-pin showing in your waistband?  Walk right back and get your belt.”

“Oh, Zury,” pleaded the harassed woman, “what’s the use of putting it on?  I’ll just have to take it off to-night and, my dear, people are waiting for me.”

“Let ’em whistle, Sweetheart,” was the unmoved response.  “Even though the heathen roar, I cannot turn aside from my purpose of making you a Parisian fashion-plate.”

“Yes, child!  It is good of you to want to dress me up.  But,” with a half-laugh, “don’t try to make me resemble one of those foreign fashion ladies.  I saw one picture in a style paper that looked almost immoral.  The placket of the dress was at the foot and showed two inches of the ankle.”

“Trust your mother, innocent child,” Zura advised, “those picture ladies don’t wear dresses, just symptoms and I’d slap anybody that would ask you to wear a symptom.  Now, tell me where to search for your belt.”

Jane, ever weak in certain resistances, yielded and adored the more while submitting.

Under Zura’s care Jane’s person grew neater and trimmer.  In her face, now filled out with proper food and rest, there was a look of happiness as if some great hope foreshadowed fulfilment.

The self-appointed missionary in her talks with me seldom referred to her work in detail.  I respected her reserve and asked no questions, for I gravely doubted any good results from her labor.  But to Zura she confided her plans and her dreams, and Zura having many dreams of her own, listened and sympathized.  In all the Empire there was no collection of humanity that could surpass in degradation and sordid evil the inhabitants of the quarter that Jane Gray had chosen to uplift.  Time and again the best-trained workers had experimented in this place.  Men and women with splendid theories, and the courage to try them had given it up as hopeless, for fear of their lives.

Once only I remonstrated with Miss Gray and that when there had been in that section an unprovoked murder of particular horror.  The answer of the frail woman was: