Elsie felt very grave for some moments, thinking out this deep matter. It was too complex for her to realize wholly, but she caught glimpses of the immortal beauty of the ideas and she was awed by it. Suddenly she threw her arms around her mother's neck and kissed her passionately. It had occurred to her all at once how much her mother loved her and how much she must have sacrificed for her sake during all the years of her little life, and though she had no conception of the full extent of the sacrifice she saw enough to make her feel like crying for very love of that dear and sweet mamma. Her mother understood her and taking her in her arms hugged her closely, sitting in silence with her for a long time, both of them too full of love for each other to speak. And so the lesson for the day ended. VII WHERE BABY GIRLS COME FROM "Now, mumsey," cried Elsie the next day, running to her mother at the hour set aside for their baby-talks, "I know what comes next--it's I, isn't it?" "Yes, darling, it's you. And it's I, too. Isn't that a beautiful thought, that you and I held the same relation to each other that the mother bird holds to the egg from which the birdies come! For once you were a tiny, tiny egg inside mamma just as it was with the birds." "Oh-h!" gasped Elsie, gazing at her mother in bewilderment. She could not realize such an astounding thing at once. "Yes, darling," Mrs. Edson went on, "every female human being has an ovary, just as every female flower has, and just as every female bird has; and, also like them, she has seeds or eggs in this ovary. And she has a great many of them. They have been growing within her ever since she was a baby, and when she is about twelve years old they begin to ripen, one at a time, and pass from the ovary into a nest that is all ready for them inside the female body. This nest we call the womb. At first, while she is so young, the womb is not strong enough to hold the egg while it grows, so the egg soon leaves its nest to come into the world and be lost, as so very many seeds of the plant are. As it does so it acts in such a way on the young girl that, when she first becomes aware that something which seems strange is happening to her, she is frightened and does not know what to do. And as you, darling, are now at the age when this must come to you very soon, I am going to prepare you for it, so that you may know that it is natural, coming to all girls of about your age, and that there is nothing to be alarmed over. All the talks that we have had were intended as a kind of introduction to this event and its consequences, for it is the greatest that enters a girl's life before she has grown fully to be a woman. And you were once one of these tiny eggs. More than that, you now have within your body, a great number of that very kind of eggs from which you sprang."