prominent cheek-bones. The
whole face had a certain air of tough endurance, of determination, of
resolute go-forwardness untempered by the recoil of sensitiveness. Miss
Bowyer was clad in good clothes without being well-dressed.

"Miss Callender, I suppose," said the visitor, rising, and extending her
hand with confidence. Her voice was without softness or resonance, but
it was not nasal--a voice admirably suited, one would think, for calling
cows. Her grasp of the hand was positive, square, unreserved, but as
destitute of sympathetic expression as her vowels. "I've heard a good
deal about you, one way and another," she said. "You've been remarkably
successful in your faith-cures, I am told. It's a great gift, and you
must be proud of it--grateful for it, I should think." She closed this
speech with a smile which seemed not exactly spontaneous but, rather,
habitual, as though it were a fixed principle with her to smile at about
this stage of every conversation.

Phillida was puzzled to reply to this speech. She did not feel proud of
her gift of faith-healing; hardly was she grateful for it. It was rather
a burden laid on her, which had been mainly a source of pain and
suffering. But she could not bring herself to enter on a subject so
personal with a stranger.

"I don't know that I am," was all she said.

"Well, there's a great deal in it," said Miss Bowyer. "I have had a good
deal of experience. There's a great deal more in it than you think."

"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?"

"A great deal more in it?" queried Phillida. "A great deal more of what,
may I ask?"

"Oh, everything, you know."

This was not clarifying, and Phillida waited without responding until
the metaphysical practitioner should deign to explain.

"I mean there's a great deal more science in it, as well as a great deal
more success, usefulness, and--and--and remuneration to be had out of it
than you think."

"Oh," said Phillida, not knowing what else to say.

"Yes," said Eleanor Arabella Bowyer with a smile. She had a way of
waiting for the sense of her words to soak into the minds of her
hearers, and she