Dr. Gunstone's was a professional mind before all. He avoided those profound questions of philosophy toward which modern science propels the mind, limiting himself to the science of pathology and the art of healing. On the other hand, he habitually bounded his curiosity concerning his patients to their physical condition and such of their surroundings as affected for good or ill their chances of recovery. He did not care to know more of this poor family than that he was to see a patient there; but he knew something of Millard from the friendly relations existing between him and younger members of his own family, and the disclosure that Millard had kinsfolk in Avenue C, and was deeply interested in people of a humble rank, gave Dr. Gunstone a momentary surprise, which, however, it would have been contrary to all his habits to manifest. He merely bowed a polite good-morning and turned toward the breakfast-room.
These men, in whose lives life and death are matters of hourly business—matters of bread and butter and bank-account—acquire in self-defense a certain imperviousness; they learn to shed their responsibilities with facility in favor of digestion and sleep. Dr. Gunstone ate in a leisurely way, relishing his chops and coffee, and participating in the conversation of the family, who joined him one by one at the table. It did not trouble him that another family in Avenue C was in agonized waiting for his presence, and that haste or delay might make the difference between life and death to a human being. This was not heartlessness, but a condition of his living and working—a postponement of particular service, however important, in favor of the general serviceableness of his life.
Millard was not sorry for the delay; it gave him time to dispose of Miss Bowyer.
Seeing that Phillida had gone to seek re-enforcements, Mrs. Martin had concluded that, in Tommy's interest, a truce would be the better thing. So, while Miss Bowyer was seeking to induce in little Tommy the impressible conscious state—or, to be precise, the conscious, passive, impressible state—Mrs. Martin offered to hold him in her arms. To this the metaphysical healer assented with alacrity, as likely to put the child into a favorable condition for the exercise of her occult therapeutic powers.
"Hold him with his back to the north, Mrs. Martin," she said; "there, in a somewhat reclining posture; that will increase his susceptibility to psychic influence. There is no doubt that the magnetism of the earth has a polar distribution. It is quite probable also that the odylic emanation of the terrestrial magnet has also a polar arrangement. Does the little fellow ever turn round in his bed at night?"
"Yes."
"That shows that he is sensitive to magnetic influences. He is trying to get himself north and south, so as to bring the body into harmony with the magnetic poles of the earth. You see the brain is normally positive. We wish to invert the poles of the body, and send the magnetism of the brain to the feet."
Miss Bowyer now took out a small silver cross and held it up before the child a little above the natural range of vision.
"Will you look at this, little boy?" she said.
She did her best to make her naturally unsympathetic voice persuasive, even to pronouncing the last word of her entreaty "baw-ee." But the "little baw-ee" was faint with sickness, and he only lifted his eyes a moment to the trinket, and then closed the eyelids and turned his face toward his mother's bosom.