"But why not?" pursued Parkman, innocently.
"Oh, now, don't misunderstand me, Professor. I didn't for a minute expect that you were to give any of your valuable time to Mrs. Hubers. Hastings is the fellow I'd like her turned over to. He's a friend of mine, and he's in sympathy, you know, with Dr. Hubers' work. All you'll have to do is to tell Hastings to do it," explained the doctor, expansively.
The head of the department quite gleamed with the pride of authority as he pronounced: "Which you may be very certain I shall not do."
"No?" said Parkman, leaning over the desk a little and looking at him.
"You say—no?"
"I do," replied the man in authority, with brevity, emphasis and finality.
Dr. Parkman leaned back in his chair and seemed to be in deep thought.
"Then the popular idea is all wrong, isn't it?"
"I am at a loss to know to what popular idea you refer," said the professor, with a suitable indifference.
"Oh merely to the popular idea that this place amounts to something; that it has let go of a little mediaevalism, and is more than a crude, cheap pattern—funny what ideas people get, isn't it? Now there are people who think the university here puts a value on individuality, that it would actually bend a rule or two to fit an individual case, in fact that it likes initiative, encourages originality, wouldn't in the least mind having a few actual achievements to its credit."
"At the same time," goaded from his icy calm—"it does not propose to make itself ridiculous!"
"And doing a rather unconventional thing, in order to bring about a very great thing, would be making itself ridiculous, would it?"