“Do you know, Mary, I doubt if I’m right to treat this effort of yours with a high hand, and prescribe for evils I don’t understand. Should you mind very much our calling our old friend, Dr. Evans, into council? I believe, after all, it will turn out to be an affair for him rather than for me.” This was worse than all. Were the miseries of this day to know no end? Should we, my Dorothy and her mother, end our days in a madhouse? I turned my eyes on my husband, and he understood. “Nonsense, wife, not that! Now you really are absurd, and must allow me the relief of laughing at you. There, I feel better now, but I understand; a few years ago a doctor was never consulted about this kind of thing unless it was supposed to denote insanity. But we have changed all that, and you’re as mad as a hatter to get the notion. You’ve no idea how interesting it is to hear Evans talk of the mutual relations between thought and brain, and on the other hand, between thought and character. Homely an air as he has, he is up to all that’s going on. You know he went through a course of study at Leipsic, where they know more than we about the brain and its behaviour, and then, he runs across every year to keep himself abreast with the times. It isn’t every country town that is blessed with such a man.” I thought I was being let down gently to the everyday level, and answered as we answer remarks about the weather, until George said-- “Well, when shall we send for Evans? The sooner we get more light on this matter, the better for all of us.” “Very well, send for him to-morrow; tell him all I have told you, and, if you like, I shall be here to answer further questions.” PART IV “Mrs. Elmore is quite right; this is no morbid fancy of hers. I have observed your pretty Miss Dorothy, and had my own speculations. Now, the whole thing lies in a nutshell.” “Can you deal with our trouble, doctor?” I cried out. “Deal with it, my dear madam? Of course I can. Your Dorothy is a good girl, and will yield herself to treatment. As to that, you don’t want me. The doctor is only useful on the principle that lookers on see most of the game. Once understand the thing, and it is with you the cure must lie.” “Please explain; you will find me very obedient.” “I’m not so sure of that; you know the whole of my mental property has not been gathered in this right little, tight little island. You ladies look very meek; but directly one begins to air one’s theories--which are not theories, by the way, but fixed principles of belief and conduct--you scent all manner of heterodoxy, and because a valuable line of scientific thought and discovery is new to you, you take up arms, with the notion that it flies in the face of the Bible. When, as a matter of fact, every new advance in science is a further revelation, growing out, naturally, from that we already have.”