d. I had a vague
idea, though not a belief, that a cock and cunt, were not made for
pissing only. Fred treated me as a simpleton in these matters, and was
always calling me an ass; I have quite a painful recollection of my
inferiority to him, in such things, and of begging him to instruct me.
"They make children that way," said Fred. "You come up and we will ask
the old nurse, where children come from, and she'll say 'out of the
parsley-bed,' but it's all a lie." We went and asked her in a casual
sort of way. She replied, "the parsley-bed," and laughed. The nurse at
my house told me the same, when I asked afterwards about my mother's
last baby. "Ain't they liars?" Fred remarked to me, "it comes out of
their cunts, and it's made by fucking."

We both desired to see women piddling, though both must have before seen
them at it often enough. Walking near the market-town with him just at
the outskirts, and looking up a side-road, we saw a pedler woman
squat down and piss. We stopped short and looked at her: she was a
short-petticoated, thick-legged, middle-aged woman; the piss ran off in
a copious stream, and there we stood grinning. "Be off, be off, what are
you standing grinning at, yer dam'd young fools," cried the woman, "be
off, or I'll heave a stone at yer," and she pissed on. We moved a few
steps back, but keeping our face towards her, Fred stooped, and put his
head down. "I can see it coming," said he jeeringly. He was rude from
his infancy, bold in baudiness to the utmost, had the impudence of the
devil. The stream ceased, the woman rose up swearing, took up a big
flint and threw it at us. "I'll tell on yer," she cried. "I know yer,
wait till I see yer again." She had a large basket of crockery for sale,
it was put down in the main-road at the angle; she had just turned round
into the side lane to piss. We ran off, and when well away, turned
round and shouted at her, "I saw your cunt," Fred bawled out;--she
flung another stone. Fred took up one, threw it, and it crashed into the
crockery, the woman began to chase us, off we bolted across the fields
home. She could not follow us that way; it was an eventful day for us.
I recollect feeling full of envy at Fred's having seen her cunt.
Though writing now, and having in my mind's eye, exactly how the woman
squatted, and the way her petticoats hung, I am sure he never did see
it; it was brag when he said he had, but we were always talking about
girls' cunts, the desire to