said Beswick, tipping his chair back and drumming on the
table softly with his fingers. "We use faith-cure and mind-cure in
certain diseases of the nerves. Nothing could have been better for that
Schulenberg girl than for you to make her believe she could walk. I
should have tried that dodge myself, but in a different way, if I had
been called."

"Don't speak in that way, dear," interposed Mrs. Beswick, softly, seeing
that Phillida was pained.

"Why, what's the matter with that way?" said the doctor, good-naturedly.

"Well, Miss Callender will think you are not honest if you talk about
trying a dodge. Besides, I'm sure Miss Callender isn't the kind of
person that would say what she didn't believe. It was no dodge with
her."

"No; of course not," said the doctor. "I didn't mean that."

"You do not admit any divine agency in the matter, doctor?" asked
Phillida.

"How can we? The starting-point of that poor girl's galloping
consumption, according to the highest medical opinion of our time, is a
little organism called a bacillus. These bacilli are so small that ten
thousand of them laid in a row lengthwise would only measure an inch.
They multiply with great rapidity, and as yet we can not destroy them
without destroying the patient. You might just as well go to praying
that the weeds should be exterminated in your garden, or try to clear
the Schulenberg tenement of croton bugs by faith, as to try to heal that
young woman in that way. Did you ever look into the throat of a
diphtheria patient?"

"No," said Phillida.

"Well, you can plainly see little white patches of false membrane there.
By examining this membrane we have come to know the very species that
does the mischief--the _micrococcus diphtheriticus_."

The conversation was naturally a little disagreeable to Phillida, who
now rose to depart without making reply. She went over and shook hands
with Mrs. Beswick, partly from an instinctive kindness, judging from her
speech that she was a stranger in New York. Besides, she felt strongly
drawn to this simple and loyal-hearted woman.

"If you'd like to come to the mission, Mrs. Beswick," she said, "I'd
take pleasure in introducing you. You'd find good friends among the
people there and good work to do. The mission people are not all
faith-healers like me."

"Oh, now, I'd like them better if they were like you, Miss Callender. I
think I'd like to go. I couldn't do much; I have to do my own work; the
doctor's