like Mother." She used to wonder if this were because of the greater modesty or the greater ambition of mothers, or if, poor things, they saw more vividly what children, and marriage, and living, and time, had done to them, and, seeing these things, it would be an irony to wish for one's little daughter that she should "grow up like mother."
Old-fashioned people used to tell little girls to behave like little ladies. This ideal of conduct didn't appeal to Alice any more than to most mothers of to-day, that is, it didn't intellectually appeal to her. Though there is hardly a mother living, if the truth were known, who wouldn't be glad if there were off days when her children would behave like little ladies and gentlemen—a horrible sight, if it happened every day, but comforting to the nerves of elders if it only happened once in a while.
It is perhaps because we don't urge them to be so grown-up that the grown-up qualities in little girls are less hard to deal with. They take care of you when you're sick sometimes, with unconscious maternal gestures that almost break your heart. They show passionate interest in dress when they are so tiny that you wouldn't think they knew a shoe from a glove. But all this isn't hard to cope with.
With boys it's different. From being grubby, tousle-headed small boys they suddenly grow up before your eyes and remain grown-up half an hour at a time. They show this growing up by having all the symptoms of that trait called "manly dignity." Now manly dignity can be anything from a proper self-respect to a jealous sort of vanity that makes the possessor walk along with a perpetual chip placed ostentatiously on his shoulder. Then, after they have made this ten or fifteen years' jump into the future back they go again,
