"You don't understand--anything--do you?
Well, I'll try to explain--though I don't know much about it." And hesitatingly, choosing words she thought fitted to those innocent ears, hunting about for expressions she thought comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the relations of the sexes--an inaccurate, often absurd, explanation, for she herself knew only what she had picked up from other girls--the fantastic hodgepodge of pruriency, physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of education distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations of girls and boys where the clean, simple truth would at least enlighten them.

Susan listened with increasing amazement.
"Well, do you understand ?" Ruth ended.

"How we come into the world--and what marriage means ?" "I don't believe it," declared Susan.

"It's--awful!" And she shivered with disgust.
"I tell you it's true," insisted Ruth.

"I thought it was awful when I first heard--when Lottie Wright took me out in their orchard, where nobody could listen, and told me what their cook had told her.