Like a great many other girls of her class and upbringing, although she possessed a wide and garbled knowledge of sex, she was singularly unable to trace the links between cause and effect. “A baby,” in this connection, was to her nothing but an isolated catastrophe, that she had never particularly connected with the physical relations between a man and a girl.
“It couldn’t, Ireen.”
“Why not? Of course it could happen. A girl I know got caught, only luckily she had some sense, and went to one of these doctors that can stop it for you——”
“Can they?”
“Some can,” said the well-informed Irene. “But mind you, it’s an expensive business, and a jolly dangerous one. Why, the doctor can be had up for doing it, I believe. So don’t you go and get yourself into any mess of that sort, now.”
“I should think not,” murmured Elsie.
“How old did you say this fellow, this Williams, was?”
“I don’t know. About forty or forty-five, or something like that. He was years older than his wife, and she wasn’t a chicken.”
“And she’s dead, is she?”
“Of course she is. I told you all about that ages ago.”