"Ray ain't going," said the customer.
"Not going to his father's funeral!"
"For a very good reason, too; he's cut off with a shilling."
"Dear, dear," said Mr. Gurd. "That's bad news, though perhaps not much of a surprise to Mr. Raymond."
"It's a devil of a lesson to the rising generation," declared the youth. "To think our own fathers can do such blackguard things, just because they don't happen to like our way of life. What would become of England if every man was made in the pattern of his father? Don't education and all that count? If my father was to do such a thing—but he won't; he's too fond of the open air and sport and that."
"Young men don't study their fathers enough in this generation, however," argued the innkeeper, "nor yet do young women study their mothers enough."
"We've got to go out in the world and play our parts," declared Neddy. "'Tis for them to study us—not us them. You must have progress. The thing for parents to do is to know they're back numbers and act according."
"They do—most of them," answered Mr. Gurd. "A back number is a back number and behaves as such. I speak impartial being a bachelor, and I forgive the young men their nonsense and pardon their opinions, because I know I was young myself once, and as big a fool as anybody, and put just the same strain on my parents, no doubt, though they lived to see me a responsible man and done with childish things. The point for parents is not to forget what it feels like to be young. That I never have, and you young gentlemen would very soon remind me if I did. But the late Mr. Henry Ironsyde found no time for all-round wisdom. He poured his brains into hemp and jute and such like. Why, he didn't even make a minute to court and wed till he was forty-five year old. And the result of that was that when his brace of boys was over twenty, he stood in sight of seventy and could only see life at that angle. And what made it worse was, that his eldest, Mister Daniel, was cut just in his own pattern. So the late gentleman never could forgive Mr. Raymond for being cut in another pattern. But if what you say is right and Mister Raymond has been left out in the cold, then I think he's been badly used."
"So he has—it's a damned shame," said Mr. Motyer, "and I hope Ray will do something about it."
"There's very little we can do against the writing of the dead," answered Mr. Gurd. Then he saluted a man who bustled into the bar.