“It is impossible for me to tell at present. If the cure fails, I do not want a cent; if it works—but we will talk of the pay later.”
“Queer fellow that,” said the old man to himself as the healer left the house. “He’s different from all the other magnetic healers I’ve heard of before. Most of them want their money before they begin to work, but this one wants to cure before he gets his pay.”
Meanwhile Camilla was reading her cure not twenty times an hour, but sixty: “Dear Camilla, I love you. Won’t you be mine? Answer me when I come tomorrow,” she read, and she did not wait to say “Yes” the first time to Bollinger himself, but said “Yes” every time she read it.
Dr. Bollinger went to visit his patient very early the next morning to see how the “cure” had worked. Papa Knight met him at the door, his face all aglow with smiles. “By George!” he said, “but you are a wonder. Why! Camilla is as pert as a cricket this morning. She wanted to get up and dress, but I wouldn’t let her. I was afraid it might harm her.”
“Why didn’t you? It would not have done her any harm.”
“I’ll tell her now, if you want me to.”
“Never mind. I am anxious to complete the cure. It is just begun. Let us go to Cam—to Miss Knight.”
They went to the room and the first question Bollinger asked was, “If anyone was to ask you if the cure was a success, what would you say?”
“I would say, ‘Yes’,” she replied.
“And do you say ‘Yes’ to the question the cure asked?”