"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's eyebrows
rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong."

"Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"

Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.

"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of
cases--clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who--"

A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had tightened,
and his chin receded slightly. "Why, he 's like a mule!" thought
Shelton. His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more parroty.
Shelton no longer liked his face.

"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each other on
such matters."

And Shelton felt ashamed.

"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson said,
as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do you justify
marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?"

"I can only tell you what I personally feel."

"My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her
motherhood."

"I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much
repetition. Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen."

"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 th