"Well now, I'll tell you, doctor," said Lane, and part of his face was white, and part of it was red, "while you're out here, you would better go up and see Hastings. I'm sure I can say--speaking for the committee--that we will be very glad to have Mrs. Hubers here." "I fired his soul all right," thought the doctor, grimly, as he walked up to find Hastings. "Those little two by fours!" CHAPTER XXVI OLD-FASHIONED LOVE Karl's new secretary was what Karl himself called "one of those philosophical ducks." "That is," he explained to Ernestine, "he is one of those fellows who has been graduated from science into philosophy." "But wouldn't you get on better with one of the scientific students who hadn't been graduated yet?" she laughed. "Oh, no; no, I don't mind having a graduate. Ross can do the work all right. I'm lucky to get him. There aren't many of them who are stenographers, and then he can give me most of his time. He's finishing up for his Ph.D." "And was he really a student of science in the beginning?" "Well, after a fashion. The kind that is graduated into philosophy." "Karl," she laughed, "despite your proud boast to the contrary, you're bigoted. It's the bigotry of science." "No, it's having science patronised by these fellows who don't know anything about it. If they'd once roll up their sleeves and do some actual work they'd give up that idea of being so easily graduated. But they want to get where they'll not have to work. Philosophy's a lazy man's job." "There you go again! A clear case of the scientific arrogance." "No, they amuse me; that's all. 'I had a great deal of science in my undergraduate work,' Mr. Ross said, 'but I feel now that I want to go into the larger field of philosophy.'" "Karl," she laughed, a little amused and a little indignant, "did he actually say that to you?" "He actually did. And with the pleasantest, most off-hand air. It was on the tip of my tongue to reply: 'Fortunately, science never loses anything in these people she graduates so easily into philosophy.' "I wonder what they think," he went on, "when we turn them upside down two or three times a century? It doesn't seem to worry them any. 'Give me some eggs and some milk and some sugar and I'll make a nice pudding,' they say--that's about what goes into a pudding, isn't it? And then they take the stuff in very thankless fashion, and when their pudding is done, they say--'Isn't it pathetic the way some people spend their lives producing nothing but eggs and milk and sugar?' And the worst of it is that half the time they spoil our good stuff by putting it together wrong." "Such a waste of good eggs and milk and sugar," she laughed. "But fortunately it is a superior kind of eggs and milk and sugar that can't be hurt by being thrown together wrong. The pudding is bad, but the good stuff in it is indestructible. And as we don't have to sit down to their table, why should we worry over their failures?"