But a furlough home was far from her thoughts. She rejoiced in her new strength, and set herself with grim determination to redeem the time. She was now doing double work, carrying on all the activities of the settled station at Use, and establishing her pioneer centre at Ikpe. During the next two years she travelled between the two points, sometimes using the canoe, but more often now the Government motor car, which ran round by Ikot Ekpene and dropped her at the terminus, five miles from Ikpe. David was the driver, and she had thus always the opportunity of seeing Mary, his wife, who lived at Ikot Ekpene.

At Use the work had gone on as usual; there had been no backsliding, and the services and classes had been kept up by the people themselves; and she proceeded with the building of the new church, which was erected under her superintendence and without any outside help. When she was at Ikpe she placed Annie's husband—they were both now members of the Church—in charge, and he conducted the services, but Miss Peacock, whom Mary styled her "Bishop," gave general supervision.

On one of her early journeys up to Ikpe she met with a slight accident, a pellet of mud striking one of her eyes. The people were alarmed at the result, and would have gone off at once to the District Commissioner had she not restrained them. Some native workmen passing his station later mentioned the incident, and within a few minutes the officer had a mounted messenger speeding along the tract to Ikpe, with an urgent order to the people to get her conveyed in the Cape cart to the nearest point on the road, where he would have a motor car waiting. Next morning, although it was market day, the members of the church left everything and took her to the spot indicated. Here were the District Commissioner and a doctor, with eye-shade and medicine and every comfort, and with the utmost despatch she was taken round the Government road to Use. The hurt was followed by erysipelas, and she was blind for a fortnight and suffered acute pain and heavy fever; but very shame at being ill after so fine a holiday made her get up although the eye was swollen and "sulky," and she was soon in the midst of her work at Ikpe as if nothing had happened.

Building, cementing, painting, varnishing, teaching, healing, and preaching filled in the days. A visitor found her once at 10 A.M. finishing school in a shed. She continued it in the afternoon. Then she visited the yards of the people, and they crowded round her and brought her gifts of food. Later she leant against a fallen tree trunk and talked to one and another. In the gathering dusk she sat on a small stool and attended to the sick and dressed their sores. After dinner some men and lads arrived carrying lamps, and she held her catechumens' class—a very earnest and prayerful gathering.

The burden of the untouched region around her vexed her mind. Sometimes she was depressed about it all, and said she would need to fill her letters with nonsense, for "it would not bear writing." Time and again she sought to impress her friends with the needs of the situation: "The last time I was at school I counted eight hundred women and girls running past in eager competition to secure the best places at the fishing-grounds where the men had been working all the morning, and these are but a fraction of our womankind. But what can I do with supervision of the school and church and dispensary and household?" She did not pretend that she worked her station properly, and she pointed out how necessary settled, steady, persevering teaching was. "These infant churches," she said, "need so much to be instructed. The adults are illiterate, and the young need systematic teaching of the Bible. They are an emotional people, and are fain to keep to speaking and singing and long prayers, and the sterner practical side of Christianity is set aside. They are children in everything that matters, and when we have led them to Christ we are apt to forget how much more they need in order to make a strong, upright, ethical character on which to build a nation. Then we need a literature, and this, too, is the work of the Church. What ails it? Is it not forgetting that God can't give His best till we have given ours?"

With all its bustle it was a very lonely and isolated life she led. There was no mail delivery, and she had to depend mainly on the kindness of Government officials to forward her correspondence. "I have been here seven weeks," she wrote on one occasion, "without one scrap from the outside—letter or paper—nothing to read but the old advertisement sheets of papers lining the press and the boxes. If you wish for the names of hotels or boarding-houses In any part of Europe— send to me. I have them all on my tongue's end." It was a red-letter day when a stray white visitor entered the district, for there would be tea and a talk, and a bundle of newspapers would be left—one never forgets another in this way in the bush. She was amused to receive a note from Scotland asking her to hand on a message to Dr. Hitchcock at Uburu. "Do you know?" she replied, "you are nearer him than I am—the quickest way for me to send it is via Britain!"

Life was not without its menace from wild beasts, the forest being full of them, and the doors had always to be closed and fastened at night to keep them out. Snakes were prevalent, and prowled about the building, and many a fight Jean and the others had with the intruders.