"Do forgive me, Cousin Lois, but you couldn’t be any funnier if you said you had seen something week after next!" "I am glad to know that a Christian Scientist can laugh," sighed Mrs. Winchester, whose mild persistency in investing the new thought with every attribute that she particularly disliked was, to say the least, diverting. "Am I improved or not since I began to study with Mrs. Goddard?" demanded Carolina, with recaptured good humour. "I don’t see any improvement, my dear. To me you were always as nearly perfect as a mortal could be!" "Dear loyal Cousin Lois!" said Carolina. She seldom kissed any one, but she kissed Mrs. Winchester, who blushed with pleasure under the unusual caress. "Perhaps," she added, cautiously, "you are a trifle more demonstrative, but I always thought your apparent coldness was aristocratic." "It wasn’t," said Carolina, decidedly. "It was because I didn’t care." "And now?" questioned Mrs. Winchester, wistfully. "Now," cried Carolina, "I care vitally for everything good!" "You always did, I think," said Mrs. Winchester. "Even as a child you always gravitated toward the highest of everything. You are too remarkable a girl, Carolina, to throw yourself away at this late day on a fad which will die a natural death of its own accord." "May I be there to see when Christian Science dies!" cried Carolina, brightly. She felt ashamed that she had ever lost patience with any one who loved her as idolatrously as Cousin Lois. "Doctor Colfax--I forgot to tell you that I met him on the train, and that he asked fifty questions about you that I couldn’t answer--Doctor Colfax will certainly be nonplussed when he sees you walking with only that cane. He told me he never expected to see you walk without two crutches." "Then you do give Christian Science credit for that much, do you?" asked Carolina. "Oh, yes. It must have some wonderful power. I simply don’t understand it, that’s all. And Carolina, it seems so--excuse me, but so disreputable!" "Does it? I hadn’t thought of it in that light." "And so unsexing! Don’t you have women in the pulpit?" "Yes. Christian Science recognizes woman as the spiritual equal, if not the spiritual superior, of man." "There!" said Mrs. Winchester, triumphantly, as if having scored a point against the new religion. "Yet woman caused man’s fall!" "No, she didn’t, Cousin Lois. Christian Science doesn’t take that allegory as history." "Oh, Carolina! Carolina! You are indeed in a sad way when you forsake the faith of your ancestors! Such disloyalty cannot fail to have a depressing effect upon your character!" "On the contrary," said Carolina, "it is as exhilarating to kick down all one’s old, stale beliefs as a game of football." At this Mrs. Winchester’s asthma returned. There was nothing left for her to do, in her state of mind, but to choke or to swoon. A few evenings later Doctor Colfax telephoned to Kate that he would drop in for a few minutes after dinner.