" 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."
"Well," my neighbor owned, "I don't know but it's that kind of shyness
in them both. I suppose one likes to think his girl looks like him, but
doesn't mind her being like her mother. I'm glad she's got my
constitution, though. My eldest daughter is more like her grandmother
in looks, and I guess she's got her disposition too, more. I don't
know," he said, vaguely, "what the last one is going to be like. She
seems to be more worldly. But," he resumed, strenuously, as if the
remembrance of old opposition remained in his nerves, "when it came to
this going off to school, or college, or whatever, I put my foot down,
and kept it down.
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