Four children appear — at some length — in Part 1, Chapter V. (They’re called Dagny, Eddie, Frisco, and Jim.)

Dagny as a child appears even earlier in the novel — in Part 1, Chapter III: “Dagny Taggart was nine years old …”

Later on in the work: “A brood of ragged children” confront the adult
Dagny and Hank in Part 1, Chapter VIII.
(I don’t know the minimum size for a “brood,” but — since “children” is plural — the group of children must have contained at least two. Therefore, at this point in the book at least six children have appeared.)

Two more children appear in Part 2, Chapter 7: “The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her … ” This brings the total number (of children appearing in _Atlas_Shrugged_) to eight.

Children appear again in Part 3, Chapter 1:
“… she [Dagny] met the two sons of the young woman who owned the bakery shop. She often saw them wandering down the trails of the valley — two fearless beings, aged seven and four.”

At least ten children, then, appear in a thirty-chapter novel in which “no children appear.”
Please resolve the contradiction.