"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a minute. 'How ours?' he asks. 'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'
"'No, no,' she says. 'Ours. To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let him be really ours.'
"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.
"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle that way with somebody's life.'
"She looked at him, not understanding.
"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely into the office of destiny—keeping, bringing-up, making, as you say—meddling with, I call it—anybody's life.'
"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.
"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'
"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.