"Come on then," Now it was Ellie's turn to steer Anne away, and they turned off on to a cobbled street. Ellie was eager to learn this secret knowledge that her friend had. Even the gulls quietened so as to add credence to the forthcoming secret.

Anne looked around. The street was nearly empty, but it still felt too public. She spotted a little alley between two houses and said, "Come!" and dragged Ellie over to the alley. Then, when she had looked both ways and felt certain enough that they had privacy, she leaned her back against the wall, and said quietly. "Well... ye know that man and women are different down there, do ye?" she waved her hand over the general area on her own body. Surely Ellie knew that much, given that she was from a large family, and it was not uncommon for fisherwomen to bathe their babes out in the yards on warm summer days.

This must be some secret, ducking into an alley like a pirate. Anne vaguely waved at her own body.

"I know." For Ellie had had many baths in a tub in the yard. She'd also been scolded for asking questions about little boys skinny dipping off one the cobblestone boat ramps.

"Well... when a man and woman love each other, or, or sometimes when they don't love each other, the man puts 'is... member into...," she hesitated and felt rather self-conscious, "into where a woman pees from. And a man has seeds in his member and they come out inside the woman's body and when its the right time of a woman's cycle, they make a baby there." She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. "But its a wicked thing to do if yer not married. If yer not married, that's the 'lust' the minister and Paul and all of them 'postles speak about and its wicked." She couldn't imagine why someone would actually desire to do that. The whole thing sounded rather painful and she didn't think she would like a man's dirty pee-thing anywhere near her, let alone inside of there. But she knew other people seemed to desire it. Apparently Alice had. Ew. Noah's pee-thing.

Ellie was both shocked and fascinated at this new information. It sort of made sense.

"Well, I'm not sure I want some boy to stick his fishin' pole in my fishin' 'ole." She said firmly

Maybe you had to be older to really appreciate it.

"Same... but apparently boys want to," Anne said. "That's why we have to be careful. Because it's wicked and you can get pregnant."

Ellie lent against the rough red brick of the alley. The small space added intimacy, a second layer of protection to their secret conversation. Ellie thought back to trumpet boy and his eel slurping friends.

"Oh god! I offered that boy sweets! Do ye think he wanted to -" She stopped. Her young voice still shocked by this new raw truth. The hypothetical was too awful to think about so she made a jabbing motion with her finger.

"I don't know for sure, but he looked a little bit like Noah Longbottom," she said, flustered. "So I wouldn't trust 'im."

“You think those girls are coming back with those sweets?” Drummer said to Trumpeter, oblivious to the jabbing motions being made on behalf of his friend’s penis some blocks away.

Trumpeter let out a fishy belch.

“Hope so.”

Ellie grimaced. She knew enough about Noah Longbottom to avoid him: a nose picking toerag with big ears from a family of slummer's drudge. To be fair to Ellie, there was a tiny part of her that was intrigued by this new notion of making children. Maybe with the right man the experience wasn't so terrible. But like Anne said, Ellie had to be married first. Who would she marry? She was a junior domestic, hardly a desirable catch yet, and still too young to boot.

"So? Do ye know any nice boys then?"