"Got any children of your own?" he inquired, succinctly. Avery shook his head. The man drew down the comers of his mouth in a contemptuous grimace. "I thought not. If you had, you'd take it a dam sight easier. Children are an ungrateful lot. They're never satisfied--or next to never. They think you're made for their comfort instead of their bein' for yours. I've got nine, and I know what I'm talkin' about. If you've got any sympathy to throw away don't waste it on children. Parents, in these days of degenerate youngsters, are passin' around the hat for sympathy. In my day it was just the other way. If one of the young ones went wrong, people pitied the father and blamed the child. Now-a-days they blame the father and weep over the young one that makes the mischief. It makes me mad." He shut his teeth with a suddenness that suggested a snap, and flashed a defiant look about the room. Avery glanced at his heavy, stubborn face, and decided not to reply. He was in no mood for controversy. And what good could it do, he said to himself, to argue with a mere lump of selfish egotism? "That is an unusually pretty girl over by the piano," he said, in a tone of mild indifference which he hoped would serve as a period to the conversation. "She's Tom Berton's girl," was the quick reply. "Berton's up to Albany most o' the time, with me. I represent our district. She's a nice little thing. She'll do anything you ask her to. I never see her equal for that. It's easier for her to do your way than it is to do her own. She likes to; so everybody likes her. I wish I had one like her; but my girls are as stubborn as mules. They won't drive, and they won't lead, and they'd ruther kick than eat. I don't know where they got it. Their mother wasn't half so bad that way, and the Lord knows it ain't in _my_ family. The girl she's with is one o' mine. She looks like she could eat tenpenny nails. She might be just as pretty an' just as much liked as Ettie Berton, but she ain't. She's always growlin' about somethin'. I'll bet a dollar she'll growl about this when we get home. Ettie will think it was splendid. She'd have a good time at a funeral; but that girl of mine 'll get me to spend a dollar to come here and then she'll go home dissatisfied. It won't be up to what she expected. "Things never are. She's always lookin' to find things some other way. Now, what would you do with a girl like that?" he asked suddenly. Then without waiting for a reply, he added, "I give her a good tongue lashin', an' as she always knows it's comin', she's got so she don't kick _quite_ so much as she used to, but she just sets an' looks sullen like that. It makes me so mad I could--" He did not finish his remark, but got up and strolled away without the formality of an adieu. Avery watched his possible future colleague until he was lost in the crowd, and then he walked deliberately over to where the two girls stood.