"I may answer your question if you ask it merely as a friend of the patient, but not as recognizing your standing as a practitioner," he said. Phillida answered with a quick flush of pain and surprise, "I am not a practitioner, Dr. Beswick. You are under some mistake. I know nothing about medicine." "I didn't suppose you did," said the doctor with a smile. "But are you not what they call a Christian Scientist?" "I? I hate what they call Christian Science. It seems to me a lot of nonsense that nobody can comprehend. I suppose it's an honest delusion on the part of some people and a mixture of mistake and imposture on the part of others." "You have made a pretty good diagnosis, if you are not a physician," said Dr. Beswick, laughing, partly at Phillida's characterization of Christian Science and partly at his own reply, which seemed to him a remark that skillfully combined wit with a dash of polite flattery. "But, Miss Callender,--I beg your pardon for saying it,--people call you a faith-doctor." "Yes; I know," said Phillida, compressing her lips. "Did you not treat this Schulenberg girl as a faith-healer?" "I prayed for her as a friend," said Phillida, "and encouraged her to believe that she might be healed if she could exercise faith. She _did_ get much better." "I know, I know," said the doctor in an offhand way; "a well-known result of strong belief in cases of nerve disease. But, pardon me, you have had other cases that I have heard of. Now don't you think that the practice of faith-healing for--for--compensation makes you a practitioner?" "For compensation?" said Phillida, with a slight gesture of impatience. "Who told you that I took money?" It was the doctor's turn to be confounded. "I declare, I don't know. Don't you take pay, though?" "Not a cent have I ever taken directly or indirectly." Phillida's already overstrained sensitiveness on this subject now broke forth into something like anger. "I would not accept money for such a service for the world," she said. "In making such an unwarranted presumption you have done me great wrong. I am a Sunday-school teacher and mission worker. Such services are not usually paid for, and such an assumption on your part is unjustifiable. If you had only informed yourself better, Dr. Beswick--" "I am very sorry," broke in the doctor. "I didn't mean to be offensive. I--" "Indeed, Miss Callender," said Mrs. Beswick, speaking in a pleasant, full voice and with an accent that marked her as not a New Yorker, "he didn't mean to be disrespectful. The doctor is a gentleman; he couldn't be disrespectful to a lady intentionally. He didn't know anything but just what folks say, and they speak of you as the faith-doctor and the woman doctor, you see. You must forgive the mistake."