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 Rh though I’m really only quoting,” she added, breaking off in a diffident way, “from what Miss Thinker, the professor of Social Endeavour, says. She’s really fine. She’s making a general chart of the female employés of one of the biggest stores to show what percentage in case of fire would jump out of window and what percentage would run to the fire escape.”

“It’s a wonderful course,” I said. “We had nothing like it when I went to college. And does it only take in departmental stores?”

“No,” said the girl, “the laboratory work includes for this semester ice-cream parlours as well.”

“What do you do with them?”

“We take them up as Social Cells, Nuclei, I think the professor calls them.”

“And how do you go at them?” I asked.

“Why, the girls go to them in little laboratory groups and study them.”

“They eat ice-cream in them?”

“They have to,” she said, “to make it concrete. But while they are doing it they are considering the ice-cream parlour merely as a section of social protoplasm.”

“Does the professor go?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, she heads each group. Professor Thinker never spares herself from work.”