Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries were there, and necessaries not enough.  It was bleak and bare; the ceiling cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books—­prim, shining books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them—­glared in the surrounding barrenness.

“My predecessor,” said the parson, “played rather havoc with the house.  The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told.  You can, unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have come down so terribly in value!  He was a married man—­large family!”

Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round his throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air.  Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers.  But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy.  It was pure nervousness which made him say: 

“Ah! why do they have such families?”

A faint red mounted to the parson’s cheeks; its appearance there was startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who feels bound to show that he is not asleep.

“It’s very unfortunate,” murmured the parson, “certainly, in many cases.”

Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the unhappy Crocker snored.  Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.

“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.”