Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/251

 six or seven of us, I forget exactly how many we had around then—when somebody dropped in with the idea that it was terrible. Terrible? Hell, we'd just moved out of one that I could remember, all right; and those two were still lookin' mighty wide to me. Then they started that talk that a man mustn't beat up his woman; who'd they want a man to take on when he got soused,—a cop? And that sex education stuff! Excuse me, Marjorie; I just gotta laugh. I musta been about twelve, I think, when some one slipped me one of those little white books for girls with nice pink apple blossoms on the covers and startin' out with all about the pollination of flowers.

"I don't know who that woman was or where she come from—she was too innocent for the settlement, I think now, as I recall it; but I do remember she sort-a blushed and whispered to me as though I was to get a sort-a shock when I read it; told me to come to her, if there was anything puzzled me. Well, she was right; I never had anything puzzle me like that book—talkin' about flowers and birds and animals for nine-tenths the way through and then workin' up to a whisper of what, if you was a good guesser, you'd see was meant to be girls and men. And me—well, where do you suppose I'd have been by that time, if I hadn't started, when I was a kid, 'bout eight chapters beyond where that book blushed itself to death? Gawd, I don't remember a time when I didn't know what men was after. But that book did do me some good tonight."

"How?" asked Marjorie, still meekly.

"When I was watchin' you; how could anybody get your way? I was wonderin'; and what was you thinkin' a man was thinkin' about when he grabbed you?