"Dear me," said Mary, "I've overslept again." She jumped out of bed,
slipped into her clothes and rang the bell, loud and long. Soon the
workers began coming, rubbing their eyes and yawning.

"What's the idea of ringing the bell now?" asked one of them. "It's much
too early."

"But look how bright it is," said Mary.

Daddy Anderson laughed.

"Mary, Mary," he said, "it's only two o'clock in the morning. The light you
see is our bright tropical moon. It's not the sun." And all the workers
laughed, and Mary laughed with them.

"I guess I'm not a very good bell-ringer," she said.

Mary's real job was to teach the children in the school on Mission
Hill. She remembered how she had played when she was a little girl that she
was teaching the children of Calabar. Now she was really doing it. She
loved the little black children. After school she would take long walks
with them into the bush. There they saw beautiful birds of many bright
colors, and beautiful flowers of all kinds.

Mary ran races with the black children. How they loved that! She climbed
trees as fast as any boy. The black children loved their white ma who
taught them and played with them. But playing with the children often made
Mary late for meals.