One day talking with Fred, I recollected what I had done to the governess. I had kept it to myself all along for fear. 'What a lie,” said he. “I did really.” 'Oh! ain't you a liar,' he reiterated, I'll ask Miss Granger.” The same governess was with us then. At this remark of his, an absolute terror came over me, the dread was something so terrible that the recollection of it is now 'Oh don't, Pray, don't, Fred,' I said, 'oh, if Papa should hear! He kept on saying he would I was too young to see the improbability of his doing anything of the sort. 'If you do, I'll tell him what we did when the pedlar woman piddled.' He did not care. 'Now, it's a lie, isn't it, you did not feel her cunt?' In fear, I confessed it was a lie. 'I knew it was; said Fred. He had kept me in a state of terror about the affair for days, till I told a lie to get quit of the subject.

I was evidently always secret, even then, about anything amorous, excepting with Fred (as will be seen), and have continued so all my life. I rarely bagged or told anyone of my doings; perhaps this little affair with the governess was a lesson to me, and confirmed me in a habit natural to me from my infancy. I have kept to myself everything did with the opposite sex.

We now frequently examined our pricks, and Fred jeered me so about my prepuce being tight that I resolved no other boy should see it; and though I did not keep strictly to that intention, it left a deep-seated mortification on me. I used to look at my prick with a sense of shame and pull the prepuce up and down, as far as I could, constantly, to loosen it, and would treat other boys' cocks in the same way, if they would let me, without expecting me to make a return; but the time was approaching when. I was to learn much more.

One of my uncles, who lived in London, took a house in tide country for the summer near Hampton Court Palace. Fred and I went to stay there with him. There were several daughters and sons, the sons quite young.