“Friendship is a grand thing when it is true and worthy, but a morbid, unnatural sentimentality does not deserve the name of friendship and I should be very sorry to see you fall into the toils of a morbid, unnatural relation with another 42 girl. Yet I should be pleased to see you having a sincere, womanly, noble affection for another girl, one which would not waste itself in sentimentality but be able to rise to heights of grand renunciation.”
“I think I understand you, mother, and I promise you I will try to hold the highest ideals of friendship.”
Such talks as these brought mother and daughter into such close companionship that Helen was not afraid to bring her mother the deepest problems of her young life.
It was Saturday afternoon, and mother and daughter were sitting together sewing. The rain was pouring, so that there was little fear of visitors, and while Mrs. Wayne was discussing with herself how she could begin to talk to her daughter of her approaching womanhood, Helen suddenly said, “Mother, what is the matter with Clara Downs? She is going into consumption, they say, and I heard Sadie Barker say to Cora Lee that it was because Clara did not change into a woman. What did she mean? I thought we just grew into women. Isn’t that the way?”
“You didn’t ask Sadie what she meant?”
“O, no, the girls acted as if they didn’t want me to hear, and then, I’d always rather you’d tell me things, for then I feel sure that I know them right.”
This little testimony of her trust in her mother furnished Mrs. Wayne with the desired opportunity, 43 and she said, “In order that you may clearly understand Sadie’s remark I shall have to make a long explanation of how girls become women.”
“Why, mother, don’t we just grow into women?”
“Well, my dear, I shall have to say both yes and no to that question. Girls do grow and become women, but women are something more than grown-up girls. This house is much bigger than it was two years ago. Did it just grow bigger?”
“Why, no, not exactly. There are no more rooms now than there were before, but some rooms have been finished off and are used now, when before they weren’t used at all, and so the house seems bigger. But it can’t be that way with our bodies, for we don’t have any new organs added or finished off to make us women?”