"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?"
"Why, indeed? But then, I don't agree that all puddings are bad."
"No, not all of them. But it rubs me the wrong way to see bad cooks take such liberties with their materials."
"Because good eggs and milk and sugar aren't so easy to produce," she agreed.