Gynecocracy

I felt quite naughty when I saw her whip her ponies which she did with a will. She had two whips. One for occasional and special use was short and heavy. She positively employed it to castigate, with deliberate, conscious archness, the off pony's private parts. He frisked and pranced to the satisfaction of Mademoiselle and to the intense merriment of the miniature groom in the rumble, who would have a fine story for the servant's hall and the stable loft.

Fortunately for the near pony Mademoiselle could not get at him; but he received many a stinging cut horizontally across his buttocks delivered from over my head.

Mademoiselle noticed how her use of the whip asphyxiated me.

"Julia," she said, loud enough for the tiger to hear, "if you don't behave, if you ever show the mulish spirit of these ponies, I will flog you just in the same way. I'll tie you up naked to a trapeze by the wrists and-lash you!"

"Oh, Mademoiselle!"

She turned and the flame in her eyes set me on fire.

We returned after a drive of about two hours which had, owing to its incidents, served to reawaken all my old naughtiness. I longed for anything Mademoiselle would give me.

When we got home, Mademoiselle held a seance by way of afternoon lessons in the schoolroom.

My good fortune was nearer at hand than I had anticipated but at the cost of much more preliminary excitement.

Beatrice had not looked at her Dante and came to terrible grief over a difficult passage. To make matters worse she lost her temper and angrily told Mademoiselle, she herself knew the construction of the passage as little as she (Beatrice) did.

Mademoiselle rose in her majestic fashion without a word. We expected the heavens to fall, while poor Beatrice looked flushed and dumbfounded, as she stood before her. No doubt she knew her fate and it was one no girl could contemplate with equanimity.

Mademoiselle rang the bell.

Mary answered.

"You must be birched soundly on your bare bottom," remarked Mademoiselle to Beatrice, who drew her breath quickly and defiantly. "Julia"-I gasped-"Julia shall give you two dozen. Remove your drawers, Miss!"

I caught my breath, and felt as though I should faint. I whip Beatrice!

"I won't be whipped! It is a shame and disgrace! It is not fair! I know the meaning of the passage as well as any old commentator of the lot. I don't believe the author himself knew what he meant. I won't be exposed, I won't"-with a desperate stamp of her little foot-"to-to-to him. I won't let him whip me." 254

"A third dozen for impudence and insubordination. Now, Julia, lay them on well, mind! Mary!"

Mary promptly took Beatrice's hands-her perturbation and nervousness were so great, that she could not resist-and led her, sobbing, to the couch.

"Take off your drawers, Miss," reiterated Mademoiselle, who invariably insisted on this self-degradation.

I had never seen Beatrice naked-naked as she would be to be whipped. I had, of course, been placed by her herself under her petticoats, but there was not sufficient light to see by, and, besides, she was pressed closely to my face. I longed to see her bottom and legs and thighs. That prospect filled me with exultation and I therefore resolved, at all hazards, to seize the opportunity, and to give her a thorough, downright flogging.

She would respect me all the more for it.

When Beatrice saw that Mademoiselle was inexorable she sobbed, but she knew resistance would be worse than futile. Still sobbing, she gathered up her skirts with both arms, unfastened the string of her drawers, and stepped out of them.

Mary laid her across the cushion and held her arms. She gathered up her dress and petticoats in front and at the back, and Mademoiselle placed a nice, new, green elastic birch in my hands.

I contemplated with rapture the plump, white thighs, the private parts, the curving back of my future wife now exposed to me for punishment.

"Now, Julia!" cried Mademoiselle.

I recollected how Mademoiselle had birched me, and how I had often been birched since, and resolved to better the instruction.

Maud and Agnes looked on with blanched faces and heaving bosoms. Mademoiselle moved in her chair in a way I understood. Mary was scarlet. I felt a strange kind of fire, a lust for flesh, thrill and bound in my veins, and I thirsted for blood.

Slowly and deliberately as Mary counted, with all my force I flogged Beatrice's bottom soundly. She yelled and screamed, and writhed, and twisted, but Mary held her fast. Before long she was reduced to the most abject submission. No obstinacy can withstand the birch.

The last strokes were given lengthwise, and I made the buds hit, and the supple twigs embrace that protuberance I had had to kiss. Beatrice shrieked at first, but then sobbed quietly, and seemed to go into a delirium of delight as the last stroke fell. She was thoroughly whipped in every sense.

"Now, Julia, come with me," ordered Mademoiselle with astonishing energy.