Nat left his father and his mother “having it out.” He limped painfully, still sobbing, up the road to my house. We climbed to our haymow together and Nathan finished his weeping down beside me in the hay. III That was the first time Nathan and I seriously discussed The Sex,—when the boy’s grief was spent and in its wake came philosophy. “Gee, but she was pretty, Billy,” he confided. “She was different, too, than girls here ’round Foxboro. I sort of felt funny in my insides when I seen her. Mabel Turner now—she’s fat and red-faced and her clothes is always coming apart somewheres. Mary Anderson, she’s always laughin’ and makin’ fun of my freckles, and Alice Blake’s got freckles worse’n me, and warts besides. But this girl—gee, Billy, she was swell. I wonder why was it I felt so funny about her right off as soon as I seen her. I never felt that way about no girl before. Most girls is—well, just girls!—you know!—no good!” “That’s love!” I declared largely. “Love?” Nathan was awed. “Then love’s swell, ain’t it?” “Depends how you look at it. Sometimes it is. Then again it ain’t.” Nat pondered this. It was deep. Finally in a whisper he asked: “Billy, why is it that girls is different from boys, and women from men?” “It’s on account of babies,” I expatiated. “Benny Mayo said so. A man told him once.” “How, on account o’ babies, Billy?” Thereupon I recounted boyhood’s version of the intricacies of obstetrics, as viewed by boys who are not wholly fools. I hold no brief for myself. The parent who will not concede that mere children do not seek light on life’s greatest mystery—where do people come from?—and ultimately discuss it, is an ass. Only there was no perverted mischief on my part about it. Nathan wanted to know something. I possessed the information. It was no more than as if he had asked me how to make a willow whistle or bait a chuck-trap. “Gee!” exclaimed Nathan frightenedly, “suppose it’s so, Billy?” “There’s sumpin to it,” I averred. “We’re all here, ain’t we? I’m gonna ask my Ma.” “So’m I,” declared my chum. Nathan finally started homeward. That night he sought elucidation for the mystery exactly where it was normal he should seek it,—from his mother. But instead of supplying his need in a healthy, kindly fashion fitted to his years, Anna Forge did a narrow, vicious thing. She whirled on her small son with an alacrity which startled the senses out of him. And she administered a shock to the sensitive boy whose effects did not entirely vanish with manhood. “Who put such ideas into your head?” she demanded hysterically. “Nobody ‘specially, Ma. I was just thinkin’, that’s all.” “No! Some one put the idea into your head. Who was it?” Nathan began to cry. “B-B-Billy and me was talkin’ about it in the haymow this afternoon.” “So Billy did it! I shall see Billy’s mother in the morning and have him horsewhipped for what he told you.” Nathan began to cry harder.