The fourth day after her long night-watch Mrs. Minturn sent a
roomy carriage--the back seat piled with down coverlids--"to take
them all for a drive."
Dr. Stanley, still governed largely by the "old thought," would
have vetoed such a suggestion under different circumstances, and
claimed that the child was still too weak to attempt anything of
the kind. But he felt that he, himself, was now under orders, and
meekly refrained from even expressing an opinion.
So they thankfully accepted their neighbor's kindness, and when he
saw Dorrie's delight in being once more out of doors, when he met
her dancing eyes and noted the faint color coming into her cheeks
and lips, and every day realized that she was getting stronger,
something within seemed to tell him that she would yet be well;
and--figuratively speaking--he reverently took off his materia
medica hat to Mrs. Minturn and secretly registered the vow of Ruth
to Naomi--"Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God."
One evening, after Dorothy was in bed and asleep, he came upon his
sister in the upper hall reading "Science and Health," and he
smiled, for since the night of their great trial she had literally
devoured the book every spare moment she could get.
"Have you written Will anything about our recent experiences?" he
inquired, as she glanced up at him.
"No; and I am not going to--just yet. Of course, I have written
him," she hastened to add, "but I have said nothing about Dorrie,
except that she is improving. I think"--thoughtfully--"I will make
'open confession' by another week, for I had a talk with Mrs.
Minturn, this afternoon, and she feels that it is hardly fair,
that she is not quite justified to go on with the treatment
without his consent."
"Suppose he should still object?" suggested Dr. Stanley.
"Oh, he will not--he cannot when he learns the truth and of the
great change in her; that the old pain is gone and she sleeps the
whole night through," earnestly returned Mrs. Seabrook, but
flushing hotly, for she had been secretly dreading to tell her
husband of the responsibility she had assumed.
"Well, when you are ready to write let me know, for I also shall
have something to say to him," said her brother, gravely.
A week later two voluminous letters, charged with matter of
serious import, went sailing over the ocean on their way to Paris,
where it was expected they would find Prof. Seabrook, who, having
turned his face home-ward, would spend the last week of August
there.
Each was characteristic of the writer; the mother's touchingly
pathetic in describing the "valley of the shadow" through which
they had passed, and glowing with love and gratitude to God in
view of the present hopeful and peaceful conditions; closing with
an earnest, even piteous, appeal for her husband's unqualified
consent to continue Christian Science treatment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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