"Oh, I learned the diagrams in that nice little book you sent me, but I'm afraid I've forgotten most of them now. I feel rather superior about Betelgeuse, though."
"So do I. We might start a Betelguese Club."
"What would we do at it?"
"Oh, read papers. With Betelguese's power behind us we might do all sorts of things—have picnics and read tracts to the poor. When you see only college people, after a while you crave being illiterate, and I've thought recently that I'd like to enlist in the Navy or move to Alaska, or go over and work in the Mills. I'd buy a black shirt to work in and use a bandana—when I used anything—and take the nice extra room my laundress has in Whitmanville. She says her clothesline goes out fifty feet, and they have a phonograph. Don't you think that would be more attractive than trying to teach a lot of Freshmen Carlyle and Hawthorne?"
"Lots, and there would be ever so much more money in it."
"It would be a kind of social service work, wouldn't it? 'Woodbridge Professor Slaves in Mill to Earn Bread.' That would go big, all over the country."
"Do you know, I've thought a little of doing some social work, seriously. I don't know anything about it, of course, but it has occurred to me that if I could get a group of people together we might have one of the Physiologist instructors give us some lectures. You see, the first thing in social work must be the health of the people, and I should think a good grounding in the fundamentals would be essential. As soon as we have their interest in their personal welfare we can get them to playing basketball, brushing their teeth, putting screens in their windows, and—so on. Naturally I don't know much about it, but it would seem as though there were a great opportunity for somebody."
"Conditions in the town, on the west side, aren't too good."
"Of course they're not. I have let my mind run on at a great rate about it, but I don't see why, if the right person got hold of it, the whole town couldn't be improved, made into a model mill town, you know—with playgrounds, and crèches, and—" Again other model features failed her.
"Well, why aren't you the proper person? I should think you could do it if anyone could. Your uncle would have to listen to you, and he probably would be all for it."