"Well, in comparison to turning my life inside out as you have done, mine's very tame."
"Well, go on."
"Oh, there's nothing to tell, really. I've been trying to see if I couldn't raise the personal standards of some of the people in my mountain fastness. That's all. It's kind of hard to explain if you don't know the conditions. You see, most people think of the country and country children as I did when I first went up there. I expected them to be behind city children in some ways but I did not expect them to be ahead of them in the ways they are. Jean, there's more rubbish talked about the morality and health of the country than a million books on the subject could get rid of in a million years. The purity of the country is a myth! There are just as many underfed, subnormal, dead, inert objects of pity among my people, big as well as little, as there ever was in a congested city slum. Why, it took my breath away. I just wouldn't believe it at first. I was all filled up on this 'pure air' and 'God's out of doors' dope until I wasn't fit to teach a goat. But I got it banged into me at last. That's why I'm here."
"Elucidate. You've jumped a few steps that my 'logical mind' needs. Why does the immorality and stupidity of a mountain district school bring you to town?"
"Because I want to talk to a woman I've never seen, but from reading everything she ever wrote and every report she ever made before all the societies there are and aren't, I have come to feel that she knows everything on earth that's worth while knowing. She may have struggled with bovine intellects in a mountain district school or she may not, but I know she'll have something worth saying. Ergo, I come."
"Pat, as I have remarked many a time and oft, you are the joy of my soul. Now who on earth but you would be so unspeakably efficient as to come down here—I see I can't flatter myself that I had anything to do with it—in order to consult an ideal on something she probably doesn't know anything about? Idealism and efficiency go hand in hand."
"I don't care. Laugh if you like."
"Who is this prodigy? May I go and sit outside and listen to the pearls of wisdom?"
"'Listen to pearls of wisdom.' Not so bad! Well, the name of this remarkable woman is Dr. Mary Mac Lean."
"What?"