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He found no ground to quarrel with Phillida; she was cordial, affectionate, and dutiful toward him, but he felt, with a quickness of intuition characteristic of him, that there was some new cause of constraint between them. "Phillida," he said one evening, a month after Phillida's work as a faith-doctor had begun, "I wish you would tell me more about your mission work."
"She's the one there was so much talk about, is she?" asked Mrs. Beswick, showing more animation than sympathy. "Yes; when her mind had been sufficiently excited she believed herself cured, and got up and even walked a little in the square. That's what gave the woman faith-doctor her run.
I don't know much about the faith-doctor, but she's made a pretty penny, first and last, out of this Schulenberg case, I'll bet. Now the girl's going to die out of hand, and I understand from the mother that the faith-cure won't work. The faith-doctor's thrown up the case." "I suppose the faith-doctor believes in herself," said the wife.
She could not confess to him the responsibility she felt in the case on account of her having undertaken it the evening before as a faith-doctor. "What is the best way to get a nurse?" asked Millard, regarding her downcast face, and repressing a dreadful impulse to manifest his reviving affection. "Dr. Beswick will know," said Phillida. "I will send him out."
"He ought to have resigned long ago, but he isn't that sort of a man. So he's at last taken to bed, has he? Some complication of the heart, I believe. Won't live long, and well, I'll have on hand a hard fight about the filling of his place. But I didn't hear of that faith-doctor plan before."
"I don't quite understand you," said Phillida. "No; of course not. I am a faith-healer myself." "Are you?" said Phillida, mechanically, with a slight mental shudder at finding herself thus classified with one for whom she did not feel any affinity. "Yes; that is, I was. I began as a faith-doctor, but I found there was a great deal more in it, don't you know?"
The doctor is a gentleman; he couldn't be disrespectful to a lady intentionally. He didn't know anything but just what folks say, and they speak of you as the faith-doctor and the woman doctor, you see. You must forgive the mistake." This pleading of a wife in defense of her husband touched a chord in Phillida and excited an emotion she could not define.
"You have made a pretty good diagnosis, if you are not a physician," said Dr. Beswick, laughing, partly at Phillida's characterization of Christian Science and partly at his own reply, which seemed to him a remark that skillfully combined wit with a dash of polite flattery. "But, Miss Callender, I beg your pardon for saying it, people call you a faith-doctor."
But he is greatly annoyed that she should be talked about and ridiculed as a faith-doctor. He is a man of society, and he feels such things. Now, considering how much danger of mistake and of enthusiasm there is in such matters, Phillida might yield a little to so good a man." "Perhaps I had better see her, Mrs. Hilbrough," was Mrs. Frankland's non-committal reply.
This action of Phillida's was a solace to Millard's pride. But one grain of sugar will not perceptibly sweeten the bitterness of a decoction of gentian, and this overflow into uptown circles of Phillida's reputation as a faith-doctor made the matter extremely humiliating. When Mrs. Hilbrough had finished her recital Millard sat a minute absorbed in thought.
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