"I?" Opdyke looked startled. "Professor, what a beast of a bore!" "No matter if it is. I believe in the conservation of all latent energy. Brenton's is all latent, and I count on you to do the conserving. I've been asking questions lately. From all accounts, you are the only man in college but myself who has taken the pains to get inside the poor beggar's shell." "Hm. Well?" Opdyke's eyes were on the smoke in front of him; but, to the older man, it was plain that he was listening intently. "Now you've got to go to work to get him out of his shell, so that people can see what he is like and, more than that, so that he can find out what people really are. He has no more knowledge of humanity than a six-months puppy; in fact, he hasn't so much. And--he's--got--to--learn." The words came weightily. "What's the good?" Opdyke asked lazily. The reply was unexpected, even to him who knew Professor Mansfield's downright ways. "To teach him what an ass he really is. Till he finds that out--till you all find it out about yourselves, there's not much hope for any of you." Opdyke flushed. "Thanks," he said a little shortly. Bending across the table, the old professor laid a friendly hand upon his arm. "Don't be huffy, Reed. A few of you take in the knowledge with your mother's milk. That's what saves society, by marking it off into separate classes, what makes the difference between your father's son, and the strenuous scion of fifty ministerial Wheelers. But, because you've already got it, you owe all the more to the poor chaps who haven't." "Yes, sir." Opdyke's reply came with dutiful promptness, although it was plain to the professor that he had flown quite beyond the limits of the young mind before him. "What do you want me to do with him, though?" The professor's eyes twinkled, as he dragged himself back to the practical aspects of the case. "Coax him out of his shell. If he won't come, then haul him out by the ears. Have him in your room and have some other men in there to meet him. Take him about with you. Take him to Mory's, on a thick night there. Show him life, the way you know it. If you must, show him an occasional siren. I can say this to you, Reed, because I have taken pains to find out that your sirens are pretty decent ones, cleaner than most of them. To sum it up, let Scott Brenton see life as you are living it, not as he imagines it from the point of view of the man who never can do anything but sit back in a corner and look on." Opdyke filled his pipe anew, puffed at it silently, then spoke. "Beastly tantalizing thing to do," he said. "What in thunder is the use?" The professor spoke with sudden fervour. "Much!" he said. "At least, it will teach him, when he's preaching for the Lord, to remember that Mammon isn't always quite so black as he is painted."