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 before her, she squeezed Dot's hand and repeated, "I'm going to have a baby, Dot!"

"Are you actually going to have it, Sue?"

"Sure. When a woman intends to give birth she says, 'I'm going to have a baby,' and when she is not going through with it she says, 'I'm pregnant.' That's how you can tell, Dot."

"Not always," said Dot. "See, Sue, I' in getting smart. I never used to be able to argue with you. Now I know a lot more things than I used to know."

"I want to ask you about some of them. Tell me, honest to God, Dot, without trying to save me from being scared or without laying it on like one little louse, whose name I won't mention but who is a mutual friend, would do—tell me, does it pain terrible?"

Dot's gaze locked with Sue's. Sue's eyes were honest seekers after truth. You couldn't turn her question aside with a stall about cramps or with a light reply. A woman had a right to have her questions answered when she took the cheap cynicism which she loved so dearly and traded it in for a straight answer on what concerned her so terribly.

"Sue, listen, if all the women in the world were sitting right where you are and asked me that question I'd tell them this: yes, it pains like bloody hell. Nobody who hasn't been through it can know what it's like. No man doctor can have more than the smallest idea what it feels like. It pains like hell. Maybe a lot of women like Edna Driggs who would hear me say that would laugh at me and say that it was nothing bad at all. And that's the best part of it, Sue. When it's over, you forget. It depends on how good your forgetery is, how fast you get over it. And it's worth it. Oh, Sue, you don't know how well worth it it is to have a baby that's all your own. If you have good care, you're all right. That's what I'd tell all