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.”