Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/119

Rh hotel Dr. Quimby, doctor by courtesy only, had his offices. In his reception room his patients gathered and sat by the hour, talking and visiting, discussing the doctor’s sayings and their own illnesses. And in this reception room on the morning in October, when Mrs. Patterson arrived, were a number of patients together with his son George, a young man scarcely turned twenty-one, who then acted as his father’s secretary.

Mrs. Patterson was assisted up the stairs to this room and her extreme feebleness was marked by all. Dr. Quimby came from his inner office to receive the new patient and she beheld for the first time the man she believed a great physician. He was of small physique, with white hair and beard, level brows, and shrewd, penetrating eyes. He was healthy, dominant, energetic. He had the eye of the born hypnotizer, the man who can persuade other wills to obey his own, especially the wills of the sick and mentally disordered. But his face was kindly and his expression sincere.

Mary Baker was at that time a frail shadow of a woman, an abstracted student, given to much thinking and prayer. With great blue eyes, deep sunk, yet arched above with beautiful brows, she looked into the friendly face bent above her and she looked with the deep intense gaze of the seer.