"I don't see any improvement, my dear. To me you were always as nearly perfect as a mortal could be!"
"Dear loyal Cousin Lois!" said Carolina.
She seldom kissed any one, but she kissed Mrs. Winchester, who blushed with pleasure under the unusual caress.
"Perhaps," she added, cautiously, "you are a trifle more demonstrative, but I always thought your apparent coldness was aristocratic."
"It wasn't," said Carolina, decidedly. "It was because I didn't care."
"And now?" questioned Mrs. Winchester, wistfully.
"Now," cried Carolina, "I care vitally for everything good!"
"You always did, I think," said Mrs. Winchester. "Even as a child you always gravitated toward the highest of everything. You are too remarkable a girl, Carolina, to throw yourself away at this late day on a fad which will die a natural death of its own accord."
"May I be there to see when Christian Science dies!" cried Carolina, brightly. She felt ashamed that she had ever lost patience with any one who loved her as idolatrously as Cousin Lois.
"Doctor Colfax--I forgot to tell you that I met him on the train, and that he asked fifty questions about you that I couldn't answer--Doctor Colfax will certainly be nonplussed when he sees you walking with only that cane. He told me he never expected to see you walk without two crutches."