But--it is a reluctant confession--you were
tired of your relations; you were weary of their bonnets. Measured by
adult time, those bonnets were, it is to be presumed, of no more than
reasonable duration; they had no more than the average or common life.
You have no reason, looking back, to believe that your great-aunts wore
bonnets for great and indefinite spaces of time. But, to your sense as a
child, long and changing and developing days saw the same harassing
artificial flowers hoisted up with the same black lace. You would have
had a scruple of conscience as to really disliking the face, but you
deliberately let yourself go in detesting the bonnet. So with dresses,
especially such as had any little misfit about them. For you it had
always existed, and there was no promise of its ceasing. You seemed to
have been aware of it for years. By the way, there would be less cheap
reproving of little girls for desiring new clothes if the censors knew
how immensely old their old clothes are to them.
The fact is that children have a simple sense of the unnecessary ugliness
of things, and that--apart from the effects of _ennui_--they reject that
ugliness actively. You have stood and listened to your mother's
compliments on her friend's hat, and have made your mental protest in
very definite words. You thought it hideous, and hideous things offended
you then more than they have ever offended you since.
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