Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. I.djvu/83

 "Thereupon I peeped in, and I saw our gardener's youngest daughter—a girl of ten or twelve—stretched on her back, whilst a little vagrant of about seven was sprawling over her, trying his best to put her instructions into practice.

"That was my first lesson, and I had thereby a faint inkling of what men and women do when they are lovers."

"And you were not curious to know more about the matter?"

"Oh, yes! Many a time I should have yielded to the temptation, and have accompanied my friends in their visit to some wenches—whose charms they always extolled in a peculiar low, nasal, goatish voice, and with an unexplainable shivering of the whole body—had I not been kept back by the fear of being laughed at by them and by the girls themselves; for I should still have been as inexperienced in knowing what to do with a woman as Daphnis himself, before Lycenion had slipped under him, and thus initiated him into the mysteries of love; and yet hardly more initiation is required in the matter