Ah, here the darling comes,' she said, as I entered the room. 'We were just saying, Miss Susan, that you are old enough, and big enough, to be showing your beauties to the world. For what's the good of a girl made like you hiding herself in the woods. You are getting old enough to be thinking of a handsome young lover.'
'I dare say,' said the talkative old lady, winking at Lucia, 'Miss Susan often wakes in the morning and wonders where the brave young fellow is, who she dreamt was abed with her.'
'Not she!' said Lucia. 'You never knew such a girl, Martha! I don't believe she ever thinks of a lover at all! She certainly does not dream of one. Beetles and butterflies and old bits of stone are more her way'
'Ah, well!' replied Martha. 'Miss Susan may have a butterfly yet for a lover, and I'll be bound she will find he has a good pair of stones with him.'
Lucia burst out laughing.
'Aye, and she will like feeling and examining them too, won't she, Martha?'
'In course she will, the darling! But look at the pretty innocent! She don't know from Adam what we are talking about!'
'Well, I don't,' said I, 'and what is more I don't want to. I detest the idea of lovers and should never have thought of such a creature, but for Lucia's chat.'
Ah, well, dearie!' said Martha. 'Believe me, woman's comfort and blessing lies in a man, and just as a man ain't perfect without his woman, so is a woman wanting until she has her man, to fit like into her.'
Lucia clapped her hands.
'That is it exactly,' she cried, 'just like one of your beloved flowers, Susan, when the male part fits exactly into the female.'
'I don't understand you,' said I, bewildered. 'How can a man fit into me?'
'Oh,' said Martha. 'Miss Lucia can tell you, Miss Susan dear, and most girls of your age would know it too, without going to bed with a man.'
'The idea!' cried I.
'Well, when you are married, won't you have your husband in bed with you?' said Martha, laughing.
'I'll never be married!'
'Fiddle-sticks!' cried Martha. 'It would be a sin for you not to be married. You'll never know pleasure without, and I can tell ye, young ladies,' said she, sinking her voice to a whisper, 'that until a girl marries a man she don't know what pleasure means. I've known girls, young ladies, quite afeared the day of the first night they were going to sleep with their husbands, frightened to go to bed, thinking something dreadful was going to happen, and next morning die of laughing at their odd fears, and long for night to come, so as they might have some more fun.'
Old Penwick's bell rang and put a stop to Martha's chat, and I turned to Lucia and said, 'Really, Lucia, you must tell me all about men and wives, and teach me, because I feel like a fool when you and Martha go on so. I don't understand one atom, though perhaps,' I continued, as a bright thought struck me, 'men tickle their wives as you tickled me this afternoon, and that is what Martha meant?'
'I tell you what, Susan darling,' she replied, 'I won't tell you now, but I'll come to you after you have gone to bed, for I don't want to chat on matters it would be difficult to drop, if that old lady came in suddenly atop of us. I think she has had a little too much to drink, and is merry; another time she might speak quite another kind of talk. But come upstairs. I want you to try on my stays, for positively you must leave off wearing such barbarous ones as yours, and we must go to Worcester tomorrow, and see what the shops there can produce, and if we can't get what I fancy there, I must write to London for some to be sent down for you to fit on. Such lovely bubbies as these,' said she, laying her two hands on my breasts, 'must not be squashed flat and displaced, but be left free to rise and fall.'
So upstairs we trotted to my room. The first thing Lucia saw on entering was my wet drawers spread out on the bed.
'Good gracious, Susan! Why did you leave those things there?'
'Why? What harm if I did?'
'Because if old Mother Warmart should have happened to see them, her suspicions would at once have been roused, and goodness only knows what she would have thought-very likely that you had been had by a man.'
'Well, Lucia dear, I am sorry; but indeed I never thought there was any reason to hide anything I did. I know you meant no harm, and I am sure I did not, when we had the tickling match.'
'My dear, let me tell you that, although all the world does what we did, and a good deal more too, yet, just as our cunnies are covered up from sight, so are the deeds done by them. So we will put your drawers away. They are nearly dry, and if they stain at all, it will be very slightly. Martha will not guess the truth.'
As she spoke she took up the garment, and held it out in front of her to examine its state of humidity.
'Oh Lord, what drawers! Why, they are only cut up behind. You ought to have them cut up to the waistband in front too, Susan.'
'Why?'
'Because how on earth could your lover feel you if you had things like this on? Instead of finding a nice charming bush, and a hot little twat ready and eager for his hand and probing finger, this wretched calico would be in his way! And how on earth could you manage an alfresco poke if you wore these drawers?'
'Well, considering I would die sooner than let a man touch me there, I don't see it makes any difference. I am afraid I am extremely ignorant; but I don't know what an alfresco poke means, Lucia!'
Ah, well, you'll learn, and soon too! I'll take care of that. But now off with your dress and petticoats. I want to see how my stays will fit you.'
So saying, she commenced, with her usual agility, to undo her dress, and before I had got mine half unhooked, she was standing before me in her chemise and drawers only.
'There!' she cried, standing in front of me. 'Look, Susan. Do you see how free my breasts are? Nothing to compress them. Each in its own little nest. They don't require support, for they are as firm as rocks, and hard as marble. Feel them!'
I did. Strange to say I had never seen a girl's bosom naked before. I had no girl-companions, and the only youthful bosom I had ever seen bare was my own. I was immensely moved at the sight of the glowing bosom before me, so white and so beautiful! I put my hand first on one and then on the other of the exquisite globes, and felt a great pleasure thrill through me as I pressed them. Though not literally 'hard as marble', they were decidedly extremely firm and elastic, and their shapes were perfect. Lucia was right to consider her bubbies lovely, for they were.
'Kiss them, darling,' said she.
I did so with pleasure. It seemed to me as though some new revelation were opening up to me, for I never should have imagined there could have been anything so delightful in a girl's bosom, had I been asked about it, before Lucia exposed hers to me.
'Now, come! Quick! Off with that dress, you dreadful old slow coach!' she cried to me. 'Here, let me help you.'
In a moment she had me in the same state as herself. I saw at once the hideousness of my stays, which were much too high and much too rigid and which fitted neither breast, waist nor hips. Lucia quickly had them unlaced, and opening the top of my chemise, which she complained of as being too high in the neck, she slipped it off me so that it fell to the ground, and except for my drawers I was naked before her.
'Oh, the little beauties!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, the charming, charming little bubbies! How nice, how firm! Why, Susan, I declare I should never have thought you had such perfections. Those beastly, disgraceful stays must be burnt, you must never put them on again.
'Bubbies like these,' she continued, pressing them in her hand alternately, causing me to feel my cunnie tickling, all on fire again, 'are not meant to be shut up in a box, but put under a glass case, so that they may be seen, and their full beauty appreciated. What lovely, lovely, little rosebuds. Like tiny coral marbles, topping little mountains of snow. I must kiss and nibble them.'
And down went her lips first onto one, and then onto the other, whilst her naughty hand again sought the cunnie she had taught to tickle at her touch. Impatiently she tried to find the division of my drawers, and at last did so, but so far back that she could not get at what she sought after.
'What beastly drawers!' she cried. 'But I won't be baffled!'
She ran to the dressing table, took a pair of scissors and, before I knew what she was at, she had the point through the calico, and had ripped it down.
