"And an interview where the interviewed refuses to say anything doesn't leave much room for slush."
Steps sounded in the hall and a stocky woman, in a walking skirt that made her appear even shorter, with quantities of fluffy white hair piled on a large head, stood in the doorway, peering nearsightedly through gold pince-nez. She looked like a large, good-natured and freshly washed puppy picking up a scent. Jean went forward.
"Dr. Mary Mac Lean? I am Jean Norris. I 'phoned you about an interview."
The pince-nez flew off as if Dr. Mary had pressed a button somewhere about her plump person, and Jean smiled. Dr. Mary returned the smile. Without the thick lenses of the glasses her eyes were small but very bright. They were like two little searchlights, ready to be turned on any fact. When she smiled, the corners crinkled into wrinkles.
"Well, go right on. I suppose you're primed to the hilt." Dr. Mary took a deep chair and motioned Jean to another. "What's it going to be this time? Poverty, sin, crime, religion, the Social Evil, the plague, red or white, suffrage, minimum wage, I.W.W.-ism, organized labor, inefficiency of the workingman, college education, or How I Went Into the Work?"
"I don't know. You see," Jean answered in a sudden resolve to take the doctor into her confidence, "I'm very specially at sea. I don't know a thing about any of those things, not even enough to ask for enlightenment. I never heard of you up till an hour ago and would hate to be put on a stand to tell what a Settlement was. I know you do wonderful things with the poor, but I don't know whether you pay their rent, or make them send their children to school. It's because I don't know anything about you that they sent me. They want something new that won't drivel."
Dr. Mary laughed till the tears stood in her twinkling blue eyes.
"My dear, that's the most adequate explanation I ever got from an interviewer, and the Lord knows I've sampled them all. So they're after something new that won't drivel." She bent forward with exaggerated caution. "Do you know, Miss Norris, I have imperiled my immortal soul and ruined my vocabulary, reading those interviews with myself. They've called me everything from Feminine Tolstoy to All Womanhood's Sister. Now, would you like to be called All Womanhood's Sister because you installed three washtubs in an outhouse for some poor women?"
"I should loathe being called All Womanhood's Sister for any reason. But is there anything they haven't asked you?"
Dr. Mary cocked her head to one side like a badly proportioned bird and nodded: