“Well, you know, I should be much easier in my mind if you would dress me now, because perhaps our clock’s wrong, or p’r’aps when you begin dressing me you’ll find some buttons off or something, and then there’ll be a lot of time wasted sewing them on; or p’r’aps you won’t be able to find my clean stockings or something and then while you’re looking for it Charley might come, and if he sees I’m not ready he mightn’t wait for me.”
“Oh, dear!” said Nora, pretending to be alarmed at this appalling list of possibilities. “I suppose it will be safer to dress you at once. It’s very evident you won’t let me have much peace until it is done, but mind when you’re dressed you’ll have to sit down quietly and wait till he comes, because I don’t want the trouble of dressing you twice.”
“Oh, I don’t mind sitting still,” returned Frankie, loftily. “That’s very easy.
“I don’t mind having to take care of my clothes,” said Frankie as his mother—having washed and dressed him, was putting the finishing touches to his hair, brushing and combing and curling the long yellow locks into ringlets round her fingers, “the only thing I don’t like is having my hair done. You know all these curls are quite unnecessary. I’m sure it would save you a lot of trouble if you wouldn’t mind cutting them off.”
Nora did not answer: somehow or other she was unwilling to comply with this often-repeated entreaty. It seemed to her that when this hair was cut off the child would have become a different individual—more separate and independent.
“If you don’t want to cut it off for your own sake, you might do it for my sake, because I think it’s the reason some of the big boys don’t want to play with me, and some of them shout after me and say I’m a girl, and sometimes they sneak up behind me and pull it. Only yesterday I had to have a fight with a boy for doing it: and even Charley Linden laughs at me, and he’s my best friend—except you and Dad of course.
“Why don’t you cut it off, Mum?”
“I am going to cut it as I promised you, after your next birthday.”
“Then I shall be jolly glad when it comes. Won’t you? Why, what’s the matter, Mum? What are you crying for?” Frankie was so concerned that he began to cry also, wondering if he had done or said something wrong. He kissed her repeatedly, stroking her face with his hand. “What’s the matter, Mother?”
“I was thinking that when you’re over seven and you’ve had your hair cut short you won’t be a baby any more.”