A child is an adult temporarily enduring conditions which exclude the possibility of happiness. When one is quite little one labours under just such physical and mental disabilities as might be inflicted by some dreadful accident or disease; but while the maimed and paralysed are pitied because they cannot walk and have to be carried about and cannot explain their needs or think clearly, nobody is sorry for babies, though they are always crying aloud their frustration and hurt pride. It is true that every year betters one's position and gives one more command over oneself, but that only leads to a trap. One has to live in the adult world at a disadvantage, as member of a subject race who has to admit that there is some reason for his subjection. For grown-ups do know more than children, that cannot be denied; but that is not due to any real superiority, they simply know the lie of the land better, for no other reason than that they have lived longer. It is as if a number of people were set down in a desert, and some had compasses and some had not; and those who had compasses treated those who had not as their inferiors, scolding and mocking them with no regard for the injustice of the conditions, and at the same time guiding them, often kindly, to safely. I still believe childhood to be a horrible state of disequilibrium.

Most of what we brought was commonplace enough: one of Kate's veal and ham pies, made with much grated lemon peel and eggs hard-simmered instead of hard-boiled.

Someone said that all fruit, especially gooseberries, tasted better if one dropped a couple of elderflowers into the sugar and water one was cooking them in, just for two minutes.... But as the Victorians considered elders to be the most vulgar of trees, suitable only for the meanest municipal park ... they were not to be found in our genteel suburb.... There the elders had taken over, ... thrusting up their fibrous canes through the gravel ... the flat, greenish-white filigree flowers were appearing among the coarse leaves on the flimsy branches.