Page:My Life and Loves.djvu/34

10 usually a fellow's sister who gives him his first lessons in sex. I know it was Mabel here, who first taught me."

I was amazed at his outspokenness; Mabel flushed crimson and I hastened to add:

"In childhood girls are far more precocious; but those little lessons are usually too early to matter." He wouldn't have it, but I changed the subject resolutely and Mabel told me some time afterwards that she was very grateful to me for cutting short the discussion: "Aubrey", she said, "loves all sex things and doesn't care what he says or does".

I had seen before that Mabel was pretty: I realised that day when she stooped over a flower that her figure was beautifully slight and round. Aubrey caught my eye at the moment and remarked maliciously:

"Mabel was my first model, weren't you, Mabs? I was in love with her figure", he went on judicially, "her breasts were so high and firm and round that I took her as my ideal". She laughed, blushing a little, and rejoined, "Your figures, Aubrey, are not exactly ideal".

I realised from this little discussion that most men's sisters were just as precocious as mine and just as likely to act as teachers in the matter of sex.

From about this time on, the individualities of people began to impress me definitely. Vernon suddenly got an appointment in a bank at Armagh and I went to live with him there, in lodgings. The lodging-house keeper I disliked: she was always trying to make me keep hours and rules, and I was as wild as a homeless dog, but Armagh was a wonder city to me. Vernon made me a day-boy at the Royal School: it was my first big school; I learned all the lessons very easily and most of the boys and all the