“They make children that way,” said Fred. “You come up and we will ask the old nurse where children come from, and shell 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 her 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 pedlar 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 damned young fools,” cried the woman. 'Be off, or Ill heave a stone at yer,' and she pissed on. We moved a few steps back, but, keeping our faces toward her, Fred stooped and put his head down. 'I can see it coming,' said he jeeringly. He was rude from his infancy, hold in handiness 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 knows 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.