"Yes?" said Ozzie politely, and he said nothing else, but it seemed to
Mr. Prohack that Ozzie was thinking: "This queer old stick is taking
advantage of his position to make a fool of himself in his queer old
way."

"Let us examine the circumstances," Mr. Prohack proceeded. "You want to
marry Sissie. Therefore you respect her. Therefore you would not have
invited her to marry unless you had been reasonably sure that you
possessed the brains and the material means to provide for her physical
and moral comfort not merely during the next year but till the end of
her life. It would be useless, not to say impolite, for me to question
you as to your situation and your abilities, because you are convinced
about both, and if you failed to convince me about both you would leave
here perfectly sure that the fault was mine and not yours, and you would
pursue your plans just the same. Moreover, you are a man of the
world--far more a man of the world than I am myself--and you are
unquestionably the best judge of your powers to do your duty towards a
wife. Of course some might argue that I, being appreciably older than
you, am appreciably wiser than you and that my opinion on vital matters
is worth more than yours. But you know, and perhaps I know too, that in
growing old a man does not really become wiser; he simply acquires a
different sort of wisdom--whether it is a better or a worse sort nobody
can decide. All we know is that the extremely young and the extremely
old are in practice generally foolish. Which leads you nowhere at all.
But looking at history we perceive that the ideas of the moderately
young have always triumphed against the ideas of the moderately old. And
happily so, for otherwise there could be no progress. Hence the balance
of probability is that, assuming you and I were to differ, you would be
more right than I should be."

"But I hope that we do not differ, sir," said Ozzie. And Mr. Prohack
found satisfaction in the naturalness, the freedom from pose, of Ozzie's
diffident and disconcerted demeanour. His sympathy for the young man was
increased by the young man's increasing consternation.

"Again," resumed Mr. Prohack, ignoring Ozzie's hope. "Take the case of
Sissie herself. Sissie's education was designed and superintended by
myself. The supreme aim of education should be to give sound judgment in
the great affairs of life, and moral stamina to meet the crises which
arrive when sound judgment is falsified