Mrs. Seabrook rarely joined in these discussions, but Katherine observed that she was a very attentive listener.

Miss Reynolds had become an enthusiastic student; in fact, she was having class instruction under Mrs. Minturn, and did not hesitate to avow her full acceptance of its teachings.

Dr. Stanley maintained, at first, a very conservative attitude; but it was apparent that he had read more on the subject than he was ready to admit.

Once he quoted a passage from “Unity of Good” [Footnote:  By Mary Baker G. Eddy] and asked Mrs. Minturn to explain it, whereupon Katherine bent a look of surprise on him.

He caught her glance, flushed slightly, then smiled.

“Yes, Miss Minturn,” he said, “after glancing at your book, that day when we met under the beech tree, I felt a curiosity to know more of what it contained, so bought a copy and—­yes—­read it through three times.”

“Have you read ’Science and Health’?” inquired Mrs. Minturn.

“Yes, twice, and ‘Miscellaneous Writings’ [Footnote:  By Mary Baker G. Eddy] once.  What do you think of such a confession as that from a doubly dyed M.D.?” he concluded, with heightened color and stealing a side glance at his sister.

“I should say you are getting on pretty well,” replied his hostess.

“No; I am not getting on at all,” he asserted, with an uncomfortable shrug.  “I don’t understand them and I find I am at cross-purposes all the time.”

“Yes, I can comprehend that, if you are trying to mix materia medica and Science; you will have to drop one or the other, or still be at ‘cross-purposes,’” returned the lady.

The gentleman made no reply, and the subject was changed.

“Well, Phillip, you electrified me this afternoon!” Mrs. Seabrook observed, when, later, they were by themselves at home.

“Why?  Because of the books I confessed to having read?”

“Yes; when did you begin to be so interested in Christian Science?”

“When that child was healed of seasickness on shipboard.”

“And—­are you going to adopt it?”

“I don’t know, Emelie.  I haven’t reached that point yet.”

“I should hope not after all your years of study and practice, to say nothing about the expense involved,” returned his sister, in a tone of disapproval, for she was exceedingly proud of her successful brother.  “Are you becoming dissatisfied with your profession, Phillip?” she asked, after a moment.

“When I encounter a case like Dorrie’s I am dissatisfied with it,” he admitted, with a quiver of his mobile lips.  “When I am called to a case that responds quickly to treatment, I feel all the old enthusiasm tingling within me.  Then, again, when I attend our medical associations and find the faculty discarding” methods and remedies which were once pronounced ‘wonderful discoveries,’ and substituting something new or something that had years ago been discarded, I become disgusted, and declare there is no science in materia medica; that it is but ‘a bundle of speculative theories,’ as Mrs. Eddy puts it in her startling chapter on ‘Medicine.’” [Footnote:  “Science and Health,” page 149.]