“I don’t go so far as to say that, Veronica. And I wish you wouldn’t use slang. Dick is a man, and a man—well, never mind about a man. You, Veronica, must never forget that you’re a lady. Justice must not be looked for in this world. Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve. More often they don’t. There seems to be no rule. Follow the dictates of your conscience, Veronica, and blow—I mean be indifferent to the consequences. Sometimes you’ll come out all right, and sometimes you won’t. But the beautiful sensation will always be with you: I did right. Things have turned out unfortunately: but that’s not my fault. Nobody can blame me.” “But they do,” said Veronica, “they blame you just as if you’d meant to go and do it.” “It does not matter, Veronica,” I pointed out, “the opinion of the world. The good man disregards it.” “But they send you to bed,” persisted Veronica. “Let them,” I said. “What is bed so long as the voice of the inward Monitor consoles us with the reflection—” “But it don’t,” interrupted Veronica; “it makes you feel all the madder. It does really.” “It oughtn’t to,” I told her. “Then why does it?” argued Veronica. “Why don’t it do what it ought to?” The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too. “Life’s a difficult problem, Veronica,” I allowed. “Things are not as they ought to be, I admit it. But one must not despair. Something’s got to be done.” “It’s jolly hard on some of us,” said Veronica. “Strive as you may, you can’t please everyone. And if you just as much as stand up for yourself, oh, crikey!” “The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica,” I said, “is to bring up the child in the way that it should go. It isn’t easy work, and occasionally irritability may creep in.” “There’s such a lot of ’em at it,” grumbled Veronica. “There are times, between ’em all, when you don’t know whether you’re standing on your head or your heels.” “They mean well, Veronica,” I said. “When I was a little boy I used to think just as you do. But now—” “Did you ever get into rows?” interrupted Veronica. “Did I ever?—was never out of them, so far as I can recollect. If it wasn’t one thing, then it was another.” “And didn’t it make you wild?” enquired Veronica, “when first of all they’d ask what you’d got to say and why you’d done it, and then, when you tried to explain things to them, wouldn’t listen to you?” “What used to irritate me most, Veronica,” I replied—“I can remember it so well—was when they talked steadily for half an hour themselves, and then, when I would attempt with one sentence to put them right about the thing, turn round and bully-rag me for being argumentative.” “If they would only listen,” agreed Veronica, “you might get them to grasp things. But no, they talk and talk, till at the end they don’t know what they are talking about themselves, and then they pretend it’s your fault for having made them tired.”