`` Pass all the opinions you like , but it is MY opinion , and mine only , which will matter in the long run , '' retorted Eric . `` Confound you , yes , you stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed , '' growled David , looking at him affectionately . `` I know that , and that is why I 'll never feel at ease about you until I see you married to the right sort of a girl . She 's not hard to find . Nine out of ten girls in this country of ours are fit for kings ' palaces . But the tenth always has to be reckoned with . '' `` You are as bad as Clever Alice in the fairy tale who worried over the future of her unborn children , '' protested Eric . '' Clever Alice has been very unjustly laughed at , '' said David gravely . `` We doctors know that . Perhaps she overdid the worrying business a little , but she was perfectly right in principle . If people worried a little more about their unborn children -- at least , to the extent of providing a proper heritage , physically , mentally , and morally , for them -- and then stopped worrying about them after they ARE born , this world would be a very much pleasanter place to live in , and the human race would make more progress in a generation than it has done in recorded history . '' `` Oh , if you are going to mount your dearly beloved hobby of heredity I am not going to argue with you , David , man . But as for the matter of urging me to hasten and marry me a wife , why do n't you '' -- It was on Eric 's lips to say , `` Why do n't you get married to a girl of the right sort yourself and set me a good example ? '' But he checked himself . He knew that there was an old sorrow in David Baker 's life which was not to be unduly jarred by the jests even of privileged friendship . He changed his question to , `` Why do n't you leave this on the knees of the gods where it properly belongs ? I thought you were a firm believer in predestination , David . '' `` Well , so I am , to a certain extent , '' said David cautiously . `` I believe , as an excellent old aunt of mine used to say , that what is to be will be and what is n't to be happens sometimes . And it is precisely such unchancy happenings that make the scheme of things go wrong .
I dare say you think me an old fogy , Eric ; but I know something more of the world than you do , and I believe , with Tennyson 's Arthur , XXXXX ` there 's no more subtle master under heaven than is the maiden passion for a maid . '
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