He shook his head again, and sighed. “Sometimes it seems to me that fathers and mothers might just as well do that very thing. Certainly you and I could have saved ourselves a great waste of voice and gesticulation ever since Lily’s babyhood if we’d never opposed her. And so far as I can see, results would have been just the same. Suppose we go on struggling with her about this Gleason nuisance; trying to keep him away from her, arguing with her, and all the rest of it. Will it change her in the slightest? Will it do any good to anybody?” “You mean to say that we have no effect whatever upon our own child?” “No,” he answered. “We _might_ have an effect. That’s just what I’m afraid of.” “You mean we shouldn’t keep on telling Lily the _truth_ about Price Gleason?” his wife cried, incredulously. “Yes; I’ve almost come to that conclusion. It doesn’t seem to her to be the truth about him when we tell it. She only sees it as an attack on him. We spoil our own cause by making her his defender, and a defender can’t help idealizing what he defends. I’ve come to believe that’s where we parents make a lot of our worst mistakes—we’re always throwing our children into the camp of our enemies. And in particular, when a girl is showing signs of being in love with a worthless young _poseur_, like this Gleason, I believe that all our denouncing and arguing and bossing only puts a glamour about the fellow in the girl’s eyes, and makes her more certain she’s in love with him and wants to marry him.” “Why, no,” Mrs. Dodge returned, triumphantly demolishing him at a stroke. “Look at Ada Corey. Her father and mother told her the truth about Price Gleason and declined to let her see him. That was enough for Ada. She just quietly gave him up.” “I know—I know,” Mr. Dodge admitted; but clung to his point. “Ada isn’t like most girls of her age. I understand her, because she’s sensible, and I _don’t_ understand most of ’em—particularly my own daughter; but I’ve grown pretty sure of one thing and that is this: If we want to throw Lily into this bounder’s arms, we’ll keep on telling her the truth about him. Our one chance is to let her alone and see if she won’t find it out for herself.” “In other words, you intend to revoke our whole policy toward him?” “In a manner, yes, I believe we should,” Mr. Dodge admitted. “I don’t go so far as to say I mean to tell Lily I consent to his coming to the house again; but I propose that we stop mentioning him at all in her presence, and that if she speaks of him we say nothing in dispraise of him. That is, from now on we’re no longer actively and openly opposing her; and if you’re going with her to that country club affair to-morrow night, and he’s there, I suggest that you do and say nothing to make her think you object to her being with him. Let her dance with him all she wants.”