“That is just what is done, my daughter.”
“What! New organs added, mother? What can you mean?”
“I mean, dear, that your bodily dwelling is enlarged, not by the addition of new rooms, but by the completing of rooms that have as yet not been fitted up for use.”
“I don’t understand you, mother.”
“I suppose not, but I hope to be able to make you understand. You have studied your bodily house and know of the rooms in the different stories, the kitchen, laundry, dining-room, picture-gallery 44 and telegraph office,—in fact, all the rooms or organs that keep you alive; but there is one part of the house that you have not studied. There are various rooms or organs which are not needed to keep you alive, and which have, therefore, been closed. As you approach womanhood, these organs will wake up and become active, and their activity is what will make you a woman.”
“Why, mother, it sounds like a fairy story, a tale of a wonderful magic palace, doesn’t it? And Clara Downs hasn’t got these marvelous rooms?”
“Yes, they are there, but they are evidently not being finished off for use. I think, however, the girls made the mistake of confounding cause and effect. They say she is going into consumption because she does not become a woman. I think she does not become a woman because she is going into consumption. Do you know why we did not finish off these rooms in our house sooner?”
“Why, father said he had not the money.”
“That is right. He did not say that he did not have the money because he did not finish off the rooms.”
“My, no, that would have been absurd; but I don’t see how that applies to Clara?”