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."
"I know," I said, "they always end up like that. 'I am tired of
talking to you,' they say--as if we were not tired of listening to
them!"
"And then when you think," said Veronica, "they say you oughtn't to
think.
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