I sipped some lemonade and looked past my girlfriends into the woods at the cool shadowy areas. Even from this distance, I could see a swarm of bees madly circling a dead log. For a few moments, I was elsewhere, riding a beautiful white horse beside my debonair fantasy fiancé.

“You mean you have to be smart, too,” Agnes said. “Right?” she asked, nodding when I didn’t add any other comment. Her highly nasal voice broke my dream bubble.

“Not in the way you’re thinking, Agnes,” I snapped at her. I was so enjoying my reverie. “I know how much you like to read and pretend you’re as informed about politics as any boy or young man our age. But there is a particular book of knowledge that I think belongs with women only.”

“Where did you get it?” Edna asked, wide-eyed. “Did you read it?”

“No, silly frog. It’s not actually a book. It’s something that comes naturally to you when you start to feel more like a woman than a girl. You do things instinctively to water men’s mouths with desire.”

Now the two of them were smirking at me with skepticism. As usual when I spoke to girls like this, I had to spell it all out.

“For example, there are special ways to look at boys who even slightly attract you. You bat your eyelashes and run your tongue over your lips to signal your interest. There are things you can do with your parasol to make yourself look sexier or indicate to a young man that you have interest in him when walking by. Maybe next time, if there is a next time, I’ll bring one to illustrate.”

I paused and, like a heart-to-heart confession, added in a suggestive whisper, “I’ve often tested these suggestions.”

“And what happened?” Edna asked quickly. Her eyes reminded me of sizzling egg yolks.

I shrugged. “Nothing in particular, because I didn’t want it to go any further. Even though we don’t have the right to vote, we can have an influence on what happens in our lives. More women should think like that. As my father says, ‘If you act like sheep, they’ll act like wolves.’ ”

Daisy smiled. She loved when I spoke with anger when it came to the rivalry between male and female.

“How do you know so much about how to behave around men?” Agnes demanded with some annoyance. “We’re about the same age, and I would never think to do any of that.”

“Are we?”

“Well, I was fourteen last week,” she said. “Edna is and Daisy is and you are.”

I shrugged.

“Years as a measurement of your maturity are . . .” I looked again at Daisy, who had a better vocabulary since her mother was a schoolteacher. She knew instinctively by now when I wanted her to finish one of my sentences.

“Nebulous,” she said.

“Huh?” Edna said.