Gynecocracy

The prospect of being despoiled of all my male finery which gave me position and dignity and a sense of my importance by these two exquisite damsels upon whom I gazed noting their lips and features, their busts, their unveiled, swelling, and rounded bosoms, their shapely arms, their waists, and their petticoats, filled me with a delicious tremor and a sweet confusion. A sense of their feminine sex overwhelmed me, intoxicated me. My heart palpitated to such an extent as almost to suffocate me and effectually prevented my eating. I knew as sure as fate that as soon as the dessert had been cleared away I should have to undergo my doom.

Fresh glasses were put on the table, the dinner things had all gone. Mademoiselle had informed the maid that she would ring if anything was required. The coffee was filling the room with its fragrance when Mademoiselle flung herself upon the couch and placed a cigarette between her lips.

"Now, Julian," said Gertrude peremptorily, "I really am very sorry but I cannot overlook your disrespect to Mademoiselle. You must be taught to behave properly and with due deference to young ladies. Come here! I must deprive you of your trousers and of these other things," she continued, twitching my shirt, "which seem to inspire you with such boldness-you are evidently not fit to wear them. Your discipline does not even yet seem to have impressed you with sufficient awe of the petticoat. Perhaps when you have no clothes on your feelings will induce you to behave more decorously."

"Oh, Gertrude! Oh, Mamma! Someone may come in," cried I, standing up and trembling, while Mademoiselle smiled on the sofa sending little rings and wreaths of smoke up to the ceiling from her dainty mouth.

"I cannot help that," replied she, taking me by the shoulders. "If they do, you must regard it as a part of the penalty you have to pay!"

She slipped her hand down to my waist as she faced me and unfastened the buttons all the way down the front of my principal garment. Then she undid the braces and pulled them down. She next did the same with my drawers.

She made me seat myself and took my clothes including the shoes and socks off and deposited them on a chair some distance away. "There! I have taken charge of them. Now, come, your jacket, your waistcoat, no nonsense!"

And I stood there in my shirt, which barely came down to my braces. She undid my tie with scant ceremony and took off the collar, unfastening the three studs of my shirt. Notwithstanding my protests, she gathered up its skirts and lifted it off over my head. My vest scarcely concealed my nakedness and the next moment that too was unbuttoned and I was deprived of it.

"This I believe," she said pulling me in front, "this ugly thing is, I believe, the cause of all your naughtiness!"

"He will have it cut off tomorrow," calmly observed Mademoiselle.

"Oh! Oh!" I exclaimed shuddering. "Not really?"

"We shall see," she remarked.

"Now, Julian, tomorrow morning when you have to dress you will have to pay for these garments before I shall give them back to you," went on Gertrude menacingly.

"I think he should be well birched," remarked Mademoiselle, who had an inordinate affection for the birch. "The birch," she exclaimed, "warms a bold boy's bottom more to a lady's satisfaction than anything else. It is so delightful to feel that one has made a boy's bottom smart, and burn so much that he ardently wishes he had not one."

"I dare say you may find it very desirable to birch him, Mademoiselle, but he will not get his clothes back without becoming acquainted with my little riding whip. I long to lay it across his bottom," said Gertrude, passing her hand over that part of me which they both took so much strange delight in repeatedly naming.

"For your vest and shirt you will receive three strokes each; for your drawers, as a more important and indispensable article, six; and for your trousers as the most important, and the most emblematic garment, a dozen."

CHAPTER 13

Hortense

"Now go," continued Gertrude with her delightfully imperious and dictatorial manner, "now go and kneel before Mademoiselle and beg her pardon."

"Pray, Mademoiselle, forgive me," I said scarcely venturing to raise my eyes to her face. She took no notice of me for quite ten minutes. When she had finished her cigarette she sat up.

"Come closer to me," she ordered, "and keep your hands behind you."

Then, with her bare arms and dainty hands, she slapped my cheeks.

"Now I shall slap something else," she added. "Lie across my knee."

I lay somewhat bewildered with the shock of the pretty palms across her silken gown, and received a severe, nursery punishment from her dimpled hand.

"Thank me!" she ordered, when it was over. How her little hand could sting!

I obeyed.

"Gertrude," she said, "he has made me so naughty, you really must let me subject him to my petticoats."

By all means!