“Oh, well, Miss Pennie,” said Nurse, “your head will grow to it, and you ought to be thankful to have such a nice warm bonnet. How would you like to go about with just a shawl over your head, like them gypsies we saw the other day?”
“Very much indeed,” said Pennie, who had now taken off the bonnet and was looking at it ruefully. “There was one gypsy who had a red handkerchief, which looked much prettier than this ugly old thing.”
“You oughtn’t to mind how things look,” returned Nurse. “You think too much of outsides, Miss Pennie.”
“But the outside of a bonnet is the only part that matters,” replied Pennie.
She was quite prepared to continue the subject, but this was not the case with Nurse.
“I’ve no time for argufying, miss,” she said as she put the bonnets carefully back into their boxes. “I’m sure my mistress will like them very much. They’re just as she ordered them.” And so the subject was dismissed, and Pennie felt that she was again a victim.
For, as Nurse had said, Pennie did care a great deal about outsides, and she thought it hard sometimes that she and Nancy must always be dressed alike, for the same things did not suit them at all. Probably this very bonnet which was such a trial to Pennie would be a suitable frame for Nancy’s round rosy face, and look quite nice. It was certainly hard. Pennie loved all beautiful things, from the flowers in the garden and fields to the yellow curls on Cicely’s ruffled head, and it often troubled her to feel that with pretty things all round her she did not look pretty herself. So the winter bonnet cast quite a gloom on her for the moment, and although it may seem a small trial to sensible people it was a large one to Pennie. How often she had sighed over the straight little serge frocks which she and Nancy always wore, and secretly longed for brighter colours and more flowing lines, and now this ugly dark bonnet had come to make things worse. It would make her feel like a blot in a fair white copybook, to walk about in it when the beautiful clean snow covered the earth. What a pity that everything in the world was not pretty!
Pennie’s whole soul went out towards beauty, and anyone with a pretty face might be sure of her loving worship and admiration. “All is not gold that glitters, Miss Pennie,” Nurse would say, or, “Handsome is that handsome does;” but it made no impression at all; Pennie continued to feel sure that what looked pretty must be good, and that a fair outside meant perfection within.
She stood thoughtfully watching Nurse as she put the bonnets away. It would be nice to wear a scarlet handkerchief over your head like that gypsy. Such a lovely colour! And then there would be no tormenting “caught back” feeling when the wind blew, which made it necessary to press the chin firmly on the strings to keep that miserable bonnet on at all. And besides these advantages it would be much cheaper, for she had heard her mother say that Miss Griggs’ things were so expensive; “but then,” Mrs Hawthorn had added, “the best of them is that they do last.” Pennie thought that decidedly “the worst” of them, for she and Nancy would have to wear those bonnets for at least two winters before they showed any signs of wearing out—indeed, they had been made rather large in the head on purpose.
But it was of no use to think about it any more now, so with a little sigh she turned away and went back to her dolls, prepared to treat the ugly one, Jemima, with even more than usual severity. Jemima was the oldest doll of the lot, made of a sort of papier-maché; her hair was painted black and arranged in short fat curls; her face, from frequent washing and punishment, had become of a leaden hue, and was full of dents and bruises; her nose was quite flat, and she had lost one arm; in her best days she had been plain, but she was now hideous. And no wonder! Poor Jemima had been through enough trials to mar the finest beauty. She had been the victim at so many scenes of torture and executions that there was scarcely a noted sufferer in the whole of the History of England whom she had not, at some time or other, represented. To be burnt alive was quite a common thing to Jemima, and sometimes, descending from the position of martyr to that of criminal, she was hanged as a murderer! In an unusually bloodthirsty moment Ambrose had once suggested really putting out her eyes with red-hot gauffering-irons, but this was overruled, and Jemima’s eyes, pale blue and quite expressionless, continued to stare placidly on the stake, gibbet, or block, as the case might be.