"On the whole," he asked at last, the usual delightful courtesy with which he always addressed her striving with an unusual trace of gentle banter in his deep voice, "what do you think of Mother's philosophies?" "I think," she answered as she ruffled the baby's curls with one white hand, "they are so true that no wonder they are--are more healing than--than your medicines." She raised her eyes to his suddenly and they were filled to the brim with frank merriment. "Don't tell me I'm going to lose my one and only star patient, Teether Pike and the puppy excepted!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "Yes," she answered slowly, "I'm going to let you operate when the time comes--but it's your Mother that's healing me. Oh, can't you, can't you see what she's doing for me?" she turned to him and asked suddenly, the burr thrown across her voice heavily because of the passion in her tones. "I came to you a broken instrument--useless for ever, perhaps--unfit for all I knew of life unless you healed me, and now--now I can make things and do things--a pie and a good one, bread to feed and the butter thereto, and to-day two halves of a pair of trousers, no the halves of two pairs of trousers. What matter if I never sing again?" She stretched her white arm across the table and looked over the head of the sleeping baby straight into his eyes. Hers were soft with tears, and a divine shyness that seemed to question him. He lifted the white hand, with its pink palm upward, gently into his own brown one, and placed the tip of one of his fingers on a tiny red scar on her forefinger. "Do you know the story the drop of blood I took from this prick this morning told?" he asked with his eyes shining into hers. "A gain of over thirty percent in red corpuscles in less than a month. Yes, I admit it; Mother is building, but when she has you ready--I'm going to give it back to you, the wonderful voice. I don't know why I know, but I do." "And I don't know why I know that you will--but I do," she answered with lowered voice and eyes. "When all the others tried I knew they would fail. The horrible thought clutched at my throat always, and there seemed no help. I don't feel it now at all. I'm too busy," she added with a catch in her laugh and a sudden mist in her eyes. "Mother's treatment again," he laughed as he laid her hand gently back on the table. "And yours--when directed by her--her philosophies," she ventured daringly, as she lifted Martin Luther into her arms, with a view to depositing him upon the haven of Mother's bed to finish his nap. The Doctor looked at her a second, started to answer, thought better of it, took the heavy youngster out of her arms into his own and strode across the hall with him into Mother's room.