“And what does Dr. Denbigh say?”

“Well, you must hear him talk.  I guess he rather wants to draw me out, for the most part.”

“I don’t wonder at that.  I wish you’d draw yourself out.  I’ve thought something in the direction of your opinion myself.”

“Have you?  That’s good!  We’ll tackle the doctor together sometime.  The difficulty about putting a thing like that in practice is that you have to co-operate in it with women who have been brought up in the old way.  A man’s wife is a woman—­”

“Generally,” I assented, as if for argument’s sake.

He gave himself time to laugh.  “And she has the charge of the children as long as they’re young, and she’s a good deal more likely to bring up the boys like girls than the girls like boys.  But the boys take themselves out of her hands pretty soon, while the girls have to stay under her thumb till they come out just the kind of women we’ve always had.”

“We’ve managed to worry along with them.”

“Yes, we have.  And I don’t say but what we fancy them as they are when we first begin to ‘take notice.’  One trouble is that children are sick so much, and their mothers scare you with that, and you haven’t the courage to put your theories into practice.  I can’t say that any of my girls have inherited my constitution but this one.”  I knew he meant the one whose engagement was the origin of our conversation.  “If you’ve heard my mother-in-law talk about her constitution you would think she belonged to the healthiest family that ever got out of New England alive, but the fact is there’s always something the matter with her, or she thinks there is, and she’s taking medicine for it, anyway.  I can’t say but what my wife has always been strong enough, and I’ve been satisfied to have the children take after her; but when I saw this one’s sorrel-top as we used to call it before we admired red hair, I knew she was a Talbert, and I made up my mind to begin my system with her.”  He laughed as with a sense of agreeable discomfiture.  “I can’t say it worked very well, or rather that it had a chance.  You see, her mother had to apply it; I was always too busy.  And a curious thing was that though the girl looked like me, she was a good deal more like her mother in temperament and character.”

“Perhaps,” I ventured, “that’s the reason why she was your favorite.”

He dropped his head in rather a shamefaced way, but lifted it with another laugh.  “Well, there may be something in that.  Not,” he gravely retrieved himself, “that we have ever distinguished between our children.”

“No, neither have we.  But one can’t help liking the ways of one child better than another; one will rather take the fancy more than the rest.”