“I ’m afraid,” replied the parson, with impatience, though still keeping on his guest’s low ground, “your theories are not calculated to populate the world.”

“Have you ever lived in London?” Shelton asked.  “It always makes me feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all.”

“Surely,” said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, “you are leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!”

“There are two ways of looking at that.  It depends on what you want your country to become.”

“I did n’t know,” said the parson—­fanaticism now had crept into his smile—­“there could be any doubt on such a subject.”

The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more controversial he naturally became—­apart from the merits of this subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.

“I dare say I’m wrong,” he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in which his legs were wrapped; “but it seems to me at least an open question whether it’s better for the country to be so well populated as to be quite incapable of supporting itself.”

“Surely,” said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, “you’re not a Little Englander?”

On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect.  Resisting an impulse to discover what he really was, he answered hastily: 

“Of course I’m not!”

The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the discussion from Shelton’s to his own, he gravely said: 

“Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality.  It is, if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked.”

But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied with heat: 

“Why not say at once, sir, ‘hysterical, unhealthy’?  Any opinion which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I believe.”

“Well,” returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton to his will, “I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and unhealthy.  The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage.”

Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.

“We live in very dangerous times,” he said, “and it grieves me when a man of your standing panders to these notions.”

“Those,” said Shelton, “whom the shoe does n’t pinch make this rule of morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch.”

“The rule was never made,” said the parson; “it was given us.”

“Oh!” said Shelton, “I beg your pardon.”  He was in danger of forgetting the delicate position he was in.  “He wants to ram his notions down my throat,” he thought; and it seemed to him that the parson’s face had grown more like a mule’s, his accent more superior, his eyes more dictatorial:  To be right in this argument seemed now of great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance whatsoever.  That which, however, was important was the fact that in nothing could they ever have agreed.