"Oh, the infinite pathos of youth!" muttered Avery, feeling himself very old with his thirty years of wider experience as his eyes turned from one girl to the other. "It is hard to tell which is the sadder sight; the disillusioned one or the one who will be even more roughly awakened to-morrow." His heart ached whenever he studied the face of a young girl. "There is nothing so sad in all the wretched world," he sometimes said, "as the birth of a girl in this grade of life. I am not sure that the nations we look upon as barbarous because they strangle the little things before they are able to think--I am not at all sure that they are not more civilized than we after all. We only maim them with ignorance and utter dependence, and then turn them out into a life where either of these alone is an incalculable curse, and the combination is as fatal as fire in a field of ripened grain." The younger girl was looking at him. Her wide expectant eyes rested on his face with a frankness and interest that touched his mood anew. "Poor little thing," he said, half aloud; "if I were to see her bound hand and foot and cast into a den of wolves, I might hope to rescue her; but from this, for such as she there is absolutely no escape. How dare people bring into the world those who must suffer?" "Huh?" said a voice beside him. He had spoken in a semi-audible tone, and his neighbor had responded after his habitual fashion, to what he looked upon as an overture to conversation. "I did not intend to speak aloud," said Avery, turning to glance at the man beside him; "but I was just wondering how people dared to have children--girls particularly." The man beside him turned his full face upon him and examined him critically from head to foot. Then he laughed. It was the first time he had ever heard it hinted that it was not a wholly commendable thing to bring as many children into the world as nature would permit. His first thought had been that Avery was insane, but after looking at him he decided that he was only a grim joker. "I reckon they don't spend no great deal of time prayin' over the subject," he said, laughing again. Then he crossed his legs and added, "an' I don't suppose they get any telegrams tellin' them they're goin' to _be_ girls, neither. If they did, a good many men would lick the boy that brought the despatch, for God knows most of us would a dam sight ruther have boys." The laugh had died out of his voice, and there was a ring of disappointment and aggrieved trouble in it. Selden Avery shifted his position. "I was not looking at it from the point of view of the parents of unwelcome girls," he said, presently, "but from the outlook of the girls of unwelcome parents. The reckoning from that side looks to me a good deal longer than the other." His voice was pleasant, but his eyes looked perplexed and determined. His neighbor began to readjust his opinion of Avery's sanity, and moved his chair a little farther away before he spoke.