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.

The young physician was no less earnest in laying the case before his brother-in-law, but rather more logical and philosophical in discussing it, as well as very positive in his deductions.  In conclusion he wrote: