Why, surely I was old enough _now_ to take care of myself! Wasn't I ever to be allowed to have my own opinions and exercise my own judgment?
It seemed not! Thus spoke superior sixteen.
As for clothes!--I remember distinctly the dreary November rainstorm of the morning I reproachfully accused Mother of wanting to make me back into a stupid little Mary, just because she so uncompromisingly disapproved of the beaded chains and bangles and jeweled combs and spangled party dresses that "every girl in school" was wearing.

Why, the idea! Did she want me to dress like a little frump of a country girl?
It seems she did.
Poor mother! Dear mother! I wonder how she kept her patience at all.
But she kept it.

I remember that distinctly, too.
It was that winter that I went through the morbid period.

Like our childhood's measles and whooping cough, it seems to come to most of us--us women children.

I wonder why?
Certainly it came to me.