Thor had turned to tiptoe down again when he heard the words, spoken in the rebellious tones with which he was familiar, modulated now to an odd submissiveness: "I don't know whether I do or not. Isn't there something in the Bible about, 'Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief'?"
"There is, and it's a good way to begin."
Thor was out in the yard before he could hear more. Standing for a minute in the windy sunshine, he wondered at the curious phenomenon presented by men in evident possession of their faculties who relied for the dispersion of human care on means invisible and mystic. The fact that in this case he himself had appealed to the illusion rendered the working of it none the less astonishing. His own method for the dispersion of human care—and the project was dear to him—was by dollars and cents. It was, moreover, a method as to which there was no trouble in proving the efficiency.
He took up the subject of her mother with Rosie, who, with the help of Antonio, was rearranging the masses of azaleas, carnations, and poinsettias after the depletion of the Christmas sales. "She's really better, isn't she?"
Rosie pushed a white azalea to the place on the stand that would best display its domelike regularity. "She seems to be."
"What do you think has helped her?"
She gave him a queer little sidelong smile. "You're the doctor. I should think you'd know."
He adored those smiles—constrained, unwilling, distrustful smiles that varied the occasional earnest looks that he got from her green eyes. "But I don't know. It isn't anything I do for her."
She banked two or three azaleas together, so that their shades of pink and pomegranate-red might blend. "I suppose it's Dr. Hilary."
"I know it's Dr. Hilary. But he isn't working by magic. If she's getting back her nerve it isn't because he wishes it on her, as the boys say."