was it you wrote to me inat teacher didn't want me to have the letter . . .? ..?" Can't you tell me, Willie? Why don't you want to tell me . .

But Billy maintained steadfast silence until the private driveway to his home was reached. Here a compromise was made with Billy promising Eva he would rewrite the note at home and give it to her on the way to school the next morning.

That evening the matter came to a crux when the teacher came home and gave the note to Billy's mother. After she had him alone, a quiet but firm lecture followed and there were several pertinent questions his mother wanted him to answer: "Did one of the older boys tell you to write the note to Eva the way it is written? If I ever find out about you writing a note like that again to a girl, I will tell your father . . . I will find out about it . . . the teacher will tell me.

Next morning Billy started out for school an half hour earlier to avoid walking the one fourth mile in Eva's company, lest she ask him about the note. Boyish pride did arise in him though: that his mother would be acknowledging to herself he knew more about sex than she had expected. That went for the teacher, too. But he didn't know anywheres near all of it yet.

Up to his twelfth year he phantasied that girls were built sexually in the same way as boys. Then he learned the truth.

On a gorgeous summer day one of Eva's brothers came over with the enticing news that in the evening there would be a moving picture show in the upstairs overhead of the grocery store in the little village two and a half miles distant, where both families hauled their cream and eggs twice a week and did their grocery buying. They-the two brothers and Eva-were going to walk into town and see the moving pictures. Politely Eva's brother asked Billy's mother if she'd let Billy go along with them. Admission would be five cents. When it occurred to Billy's mother that there would be a full moon, she gave Billy permission to go.

To shorten the distance some to the village the four of them-Billy, Eva and her two brothers-took a short cut across through the hilly and wooded cow pasture of the Beane farm. They walked along the tree shaded creek that ran all the way through the pasture.

By the time they got to within a half mile of town, twilight had turned to dusk and the full moon had risen, and the oldest of the brothers stopped walking.

"We better take a pee before we go into the show." And without any ado the two brothers turned their backs to Billy and Eva, and did it. Billy felt he should have done the same, because he was already feeling the need for it, but in his 'only child' modesty, even with his back to Eva, it would have been the last thing he would have undertaken.

The moving pictures were the old time flickers of nickelodeon, but Billy was enthralled by them, they being the first ones he had seen. They even showed a much publicized murderer put to death in the electric chair, although Billy didn't realize the meaning of it at the time. But by the time the show ended, his knee length knicker pants were well soaked.

With the moon lighting the way the four took the same route home across a field and then through the wooded pasture. Scarce had they left the village limits when the two brothers again turned their backs to Billy and Eva. Their feeling of relief transmitted itself to Billy and almost involuntarily he did some more pants soaking-and still more as they walked along the bewooded

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