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MY SECRET LIFE

nursemaid said: “What it the matter, what have you been doing to the baby?” Nothing. “Yes, you are coloring up, now tell me.” “Nothing. I have done nothing.” “You wakened your sister.” “No, I have not.” The girl laid hold of me, and gave me a little shake. “I’ll tell your mamma if you don’t tell me, what is it now?” “No, I have done nothing, I was looking out of the window when she began to cry.” “You’re telling a story, I see you are,” said the nursemaid; and off I went, after being impudent to her.

I told Fred and he tried the same dodge, but dont recollect whether he succeeded or not. His sisters were somewhat older, and we began to scheme how to see their cunts, when I was on a visit to his mother’s (my aunt,) which was to come off in the holidays. The look of the little child’s cunt, as I described it, convinced him that the picture was correct, and that a cunt was a long slit, and not a round hole. That cast doubt on males putting their pricks into them, and we clung somehow to the idea of a round hole, and we quarrelled about it.

It must have been about this time, that I was walking with my father, and read something that was written with chalk, on the walls. I asked him what it meant. He said he did not know, that none but low people, and blackguards wrote on walls; and it was not worth while noticing such things. I was conscious that I had done wrong somehow, but did not know exactly what. When I went out, which I was now allowed to do for short distances by myself, I copied what was on the walls, to tell Fred, it was foul, baudy language of some sort, but the only thing we understood at all, was the word cunt.

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