"I am very glad to be of service--to so charming a young woman," says Larcher, very distinctly.
"A charming girl, yes. I'm very proud of my daughter. She's my constant thought. Children are a great care, a great responsibility."
"Yes, they are," asserts Larcher, jumping at the chance to show this uninterested old person that wise young men may sometimes be entertained unawares. "It's a sign of progress that parents are learning on which side the responsibility lies. It used to be universally accepted that the obligation was on the part of the children. Now every writer on the subject starts on the basis that the obligation is on the side of the parent. It's hard to see how the world could have been so idiotic formerly. As if the child, summoned here in ignorance by the parents for their own happiness, owed them anything!"
Mr. Kenby stares at the young man for a time, and then says, icily:
"Why, it's very clear," says Larcher, interested now for his argument. "You spoke of your sense of responsibility toward your child."
"Well, that sense is most natural in you, and shows an enlightened mind. For how can parents feel other than deeply responsible toward the being they have called into existence? How can they help seeing their obligation to make existence for that being as good and happy as it's in their power to make it? Who dare say that there is a limit to their obligation toward that being?"
"And how about that being's obligations in return?" Mr. Kenby demands, rather loftily.
"That being's obligations go forward to the beings it in turn summons to life. The child, becoming in time a parent, assumes a parent's debt. The obligation passes on from generation to generation, moving always to the future, never back to the past."
"Somewhat original theories!" sniffs the old man. "I suppose, then, a parent in his old age has no right to look for support to his children?"
"It is the duty of people, before they presume to become parents, to provide against the likelihood of ever being a burden to their children. In accepting from their children, they rob their children's children. But the world isn't sufficiently advanced yet to make people so far-seeing and provident, and many parents do have to look to their children for support. In such cases, the child ought to provide for the parent, but out of love or humanity, not because of any purely logical claim. You see the difference, of course."