The younger missionaries began to frequent Akpap, and from the accounts of their visits we obtain some unstudied and vivid pictures of "Ma" and her household. This slight woman with the shrunk and colourless skin, the remarkable deep-set eyes, and the Scots tongue, so poor in the gifts of the world, so rich in the qualities of the spirit, made a deep impression upon them, although it is a question whether they ever fully understood all she was and did. They lived in the European atmosphere, she in the native; they noticed only superficial aspects, she moved deep beneath the surface amongst conditions of which they were only dimly aware.

"We walk for five or six miles along the pleasant bush path," writes one, "and as we near the big trees and the clearing round the Mission House, children's voices cry, 'Ma is coming,' and a sweet, somewhat strident voice inquires, 'What Ma? Jean put the kettle on, Jean put the kettle on.' 'And we'll all have tea,' sings out my friend. 'How are you, Ma?' for we have reached the verandah, and 'Ma,' eagerly hospitable, is giving us a royal welcome." She was usually found barefooted and bareheaded, with a twin-baby in her arms and a swarm of children about her, or on the roof nailing down the sheet-iron which a tornado had shifted, or holding a palaver from the verandah, or sitting in Court, but always busy. "No one can have much time for rest here," was the verdict of one missionary after a short stay. "Her power," wrote another, "is amazing; she is really Queen of the whole of Okoyong district. The High Commissioner and his staff leave the administration of it in her hands. It is wonderful to see the grip she has of the most intricate native and political questions of the country. The people tell me she knows their language better than they do themselves, and that they appeal to her on their own customs and laws. She has done a magnificent work, and the people have a deeper reverence for her than you can imagine. When they speak of her their tones change. One thing I noticed, she never allowed a native to sit in her presence. She keeps them all at a respectful distance, although when they are ill, sometimes with the most loathsome diseases, she will nurse them; and she never shakes hands with them. She told the High Commissioner to do so with some—but for herself, never! When I asked her the reason she looked at me and said simply, 'I live alone.'"

The reference to her command of the language bears out what all competent observers have stated. Some missionaries retain their accent even after long service and speak as foreigners, but she had all the vocabulary, the idioms, the inflections, the guttural sounds, the interjections, and sarcasms, as well as the quick characteristic gestures that belong only to the natives. "She excelled even the natives themselves in their own tongue," says Mr. Luke. "She could play with it and make the people smile; she could cut with it and make them wince; she could pour spates of indignation until they cried out, 'Ekem! Enough, Ma!' and she could croon with it and make the twins she saved happy, and she could sing with it softly to comfort and cheer." One visitor who accompanied a missionary friend found her haranguing a crowd who had arrived to palaver. She stopped now and again and spoke to the visitors in broad Scots. "Well," said the missionary afterwards, "what do you think of her?" "I would not like her to catch me stealing her chickens!" was the reply.

One of the qualities which astonished her guests was her utter fearlessness. There were no locks on her mission doors. She went everywhere, condemning chiefs, fining them, divorcing them; and came home to her bairns to be a child with them, and to romp and sing to them queer little chants of her own composition. One story of these days her visitors carried away. A murder had been committed, and the slayer was pursued by the people, who intended to follow out their custom and torture him. He was seized and chained. Straining to break loose, his eyes almost bursting from their sockets, he cried, "Beware! You may kill me, but my spirit will come back and spoil you. Ay, it will not be you, the slaves, but you, the chiefs, that will suffer. Beware! I will come if you do not take me to Ma's house."

He was taken to "Ma," who on hearing the evidence ordered him to be conveyed to Duke Town. Then she loosed him from his chains and sat down with him alone in the house for the whole afternoon. The doors and windows were open, and all he had to do was to strike her down and fly. But she showed no fear. At night he was again chained and placed in the prayer-room or store-room underneath until the guard arrived. During the night he managed to slip off his chains and was free to escape into the bush. When she went into the room in the morning with food and called him, there was no sound or reply. It was dark in the place, but she entered and moved around to find the prisoner. At the back of the door she came into contact with his swinging body. He had taken off his loin-cloth and hanged himself.

Her visitors noticed, almost with wonders her devotion to her children and the little morsels of humanity that came pouring in upon her. Miss Welsh, LL.A., thus describes the household: "Jean, the ever-cheerful and willing helper; Annie the drawer of water and hewer of wood, kind willing worker; Mary the smart, handsome favourite; Alice the stolid dependable little body, and Maggie the fusionless, Dannie the imp, and AsoquÖ who looked with his big innocent eyes a wee angel, and who yet was in constant trouble, chiefly for insisting on sharing the cat's meals. Then there were the babies—a lovely wee twin-girl, whom their mother was nursing, a poor wee boy almost skin and bone lying cradled in a box. Behind the house in a rough shelter was another twin-mother caring none too kindly for her surviving child." Another writes, "I never saw anything more beautiful than her devotion to these black children. She had a poor sick boy in her arms all the time, and nursed him while walking up and down directing the girls. He died at 11.30 and she slept with him in her arms all night. Next morning he was put in a small milk packing-case, and the children dug a grave and buried it and held a service."

And here we have the scene at evening prayers: "We began with an Efik hymn of her own, which she repeated line by line, while the little ones chanted it with a weird intonation. They then sang the whole to the tune French. She tested their memory of the morning lesson, and gave them a homely but powerful address, interrupting herself once to tell us how hydrophobia had broken out a few days before, and how she had held one poor lad of ten in her arms until he died. She prayed, and the children bowed down their heads till they rested upon the ground. They next chanted the 'Amen,' and half-chanted the Lord's Prayer, and finished with what she called 'one of the new fanciful English hymns— 'If I come to Jesus.' Then very simply and sweetly she commended us all to the Father's love and care."

Long talks, often prolonged into the night, would follow. "How Ma talked," says Miss Welsh, "and what a privilege it was to listen, what an experience, and what an education! How she made the past vivid as she lived it over again—the days of her girlhood—her mischievous pranks, her love of fun, her early days in Calabar, tales of the old worthies, tales of herself, and her own life, of her early pioneering, of loved ones at home, of kind letters whose messages of cheer she would share, of comfort and help from God's word—from the passage of the day's reading, of new lessons learned, of new light revealed. I can still hear her, still listen with the old fascination, still enjoy her wild indignations, still marvel at her amazing personality, her extraordinary vitality and energy, still feel as I have ever felt her God-given power to draw one nearer to the Lord she loved so well."

When her guests departed she would walk with them a long way, her feet bare, her head uncovered. "No," said a missionary, "I would not like to see other ladies do that, but I would not care to see her different. It is easy to give a false impression of her. She is not unwomanly. She is eccentric if you like, but she is gentle of heart, with a beautiful simplicity of nature, I join in the reverence which the natives show her."