“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.”