There were very grateful, reverent hearts in the Hunt cottage that day and during the days that followed, for Dorothy continued to improve rapidly and steadily, and there was no return of the old pain that had made life so wretched for her for years.
The fourth day after her long night-watch Mrs. Minturn sent a roomy carriage—the back seat piled with down coverlids—"to take them all for a drive."
Dr. Stanley, still governed largely by the "old thought," would have vetoed such a suggestion under different circumstances, and claimed that the child was still too weak to attempt anything of the kind. But he felt that he, himself, was now under orders, and meekly refrained from even expressing an opinion.
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.