all about a man, and what it is he does to one. What are short digs?'
'I'll sleep with you tonight, my pet,' she said, kissing me, 'but I shall have so much to tell that I won't spoil the fun by beginning now. Besides, when once I get on that topic I shall get so wild, I know that nothing but my copious and repeated spending will relieve me, or you either,' said she, archly laughing and stroking my cunnie most delightfully. 'Now,' she added, 'come, dress, and put on my stays, and I'll put on yours, and we will go and exhibit ourselves to Mrs. Warmart.'
Lucia made me put on her stays and dress and she herself put on mine. We were much of the same height and build, only, as I have said before, she was everywhere a little fuller, more rounded, so to say, than I. Both she and I were surprised to find that her dress was not in the least too full in the bosom for me, and it was not simply the stays which made the fit apparently correct, for my own bubbies quite filled up the bags in them; in fact, had they been made for me, her stays could not have fitted better. But it was different with her when she put on mine. Her poor, darling, lovely bubbies were simply squashed out flat, and yet she could hardly get my dress to fasten over her bosom.
'Oh,' she cried, 'the brutal instrument of torture! I will wear it for a few minutes just to show Martha, but no longer. After that, Susan, my dear, we will change again. I wonder how you could have endured such a strait- jacket as this, or how on earth your bubbies ever came to be so sweetly round and pointed as they really are. Mine are crushed!' Then, looking me over, she exclaimed at the beauty of my figure, which was now shown off, she said, to perfection, and had a chance of appearing at last as it should. We ran downstairs to Martha, who, busy at some household work, looked up and mistook me for Lucia.
Lucia was delighted.
'Ah! Susan, I told you so. Now look, Mrs. Warmart, I am not going to let Susan wear those abominable stays any longer. I know I have a good figure, yet just look at me! Did you ever see such a lout of a girl as I look! Positively you would never think I had any breasts at all, and I declare I hardly thought Susan had any either. Yet see! Just feel the lovely little ducks! Firm, round, elastic; such a pair of pretty doves with little rosy bills! It is downright shameful to crush them in such a wooden box of a corset as this. I know my breast is actually hurt under it.'
'Well, you see, miss, it was all her ma's wish. She never liked Miss Susan to look grown up and developed,'
'But why? Why on earth? Anyone could see that she must be quite ripe. Look at her hips.'
Ah, well! She had a good reason, my dear young lady.'
'Perhaps she had, and perhaps she had as good a reason why poor Susan should be condemned to wear drawers which must be exceedingly incommodious at certain times, to say the least of it!'
'Well, yes, miss. There was the same reason for that too. I hardly like to say before Miss Susan, because she is innocent like. Yet she ought to know to be on her guard.'
'Well, Martha, since Susan is quite old enough to know what is what, you might tell us the grand reason.'
'Well, miss, when Master Charlie Althair lived at The Broads, people said that there were not two greater pests than him and Jack Cocklade, who lived in Leigh. I do believe Master Charlie got credit for doing more than he did, but all the people complained that no sooner did their daughters get fledged than either he or Jack would be into them, and that ripe maidenheads could not be found, high or low! What Master Charlie did not pluck, Jack did. No one ever brought an affiliation case against Master Charlie, but Jack is known to be father of ever so many love children. Poor Miss Mary Essex was raped by one or other of 'em in her own father's field, not half a mile from home. I believe that it was Jack who did it, but there was a great noise a little time after when she and Master Charlie were caught hard at it by Mr Essex in one of his barns. They were caught in the very act, and it was that which caused Mrs. Althair, who had no idea until then what a lively lad he was, to go away from The Broads. I believe she had to pay up handsomely for that little spree of her son's, and being a very strict and straight lady, she could not face the people after her disgrace, as she called it. Jack, indeed, got imprisoned for his share, because Miss Mary Essex confessed he had had her before Master Charlie and against her will; but Master Charlie was let off pretty easy because she had to admit that she did love being had by him. This happened some five or six years ago, and poor Mrs. Aked got such a shock she wouldn't let Miss Susan out by herself, nor allow her to have her drawers divided at all. But poor Miss Susan complained she could not do her jobs easy when she had to unbutton her drawers behind, so she had them cut as you find them now.'
I saw that Lucia was shaking with internal laughter, and I felt beetroot-red with shame. But more and more I understood what was said about Charlie Althair and Jack Cocklade, and why my drawers were so made as to cover my cunnie completely when not partly loosened.
'Well, Martha,' said Lucia, 'I think Susan can defend herself in future. So anyhow I am going to take it on myself to drive her to Worcester tomorrow to look for a decent pair of stays, and as she is so uncomfortable in her drawers, we will cut them up in front and make them as they should be.'
'I'm much afraid you can't go to Worcester tomorrow, my dear young lady, because the horse has gone to be shod, and won't be back till tomorrow afternoon. Bill Coachman is going to Hereford to see his wife's mother, and said he would not be here till tomorrow evening, but the brougham will be ready for you the next day after.'
'Well, so be it. We can wait a day. Come, Susan. Now for goodness' sake let me have my stays again!'
So off we trotted upstairs once more. I admired myself in the glass until Lucia had taken off her dress, and then, with a sigh, I yielded her own, and once more clad myself in my old habiliments.
Agreeably to her promise Lucia came to my bedroom after Martha and the servants had gone to bed. She sprang into my bed and clasped me in her arms and kissed me repeatedly and said, 'Oh, Susan, we will have such a night of it. I'll tell you all you want to know, and I will show you more, and I will prove to you that it is downright folly to lose years of youth, which can be so well turned to profit by using the charms and senses nature has given you. But let me put my hand between your legs, darling. Ah, that is it. Now I'll just slip my finger in this delicious little cunt. You do the same to me!'
Ah! Now am I not nice and hot and soft inside?'
'Indeed you are, Lucia, like velvet warmed before the fire.'
'And so are you, darling; but now we won't have any tickling yet. Now I will tell you about men.'
'Oh, do! I am dying with curiosity, Lucia.'
'Well now, just here,' said she, pressing her thumb on a spot above my cunnie, 'a man's thing grows out from him. That thing is called his prick, or his yard, or his tool, or his Johnnie, or half a hundred other names. When it is not standing, it is about two and a half or three inches long, all small and soft and flabby and wrinkled, but when it stands it is seven or eight inches long, as big round as my wrist, and hard as iron. A most formidable weapon to thrust into the poor little belly of a girl!'
'But what makes it stand, Lucia?' I asked, breathless with unaccountable emotion, and feeling a strange shiver pass through me at the notion of such a monstrous thing being thrust into my belly.
'Oh, there are physical reasons for that which I won't go into now, but the actual cause of its standing is desire. When a man thinks of a girl and wants to have her, up goes his prick; it lifts itself with pride and power, and becomes just like a bar of iron covered from end to end with a thick, soft, velvety skin. If you were to take a good hold of one in that condition you could move your hand up and down, without the skin slipping from under your fingers, just like you can move the skin of a cat on its body!'
'Really? How curious!'
'Yes, well, there it stands. But it is not exactly round. It is slightly broader than it is deep, so to say, and it has the most curious-looking head imaginable. It is something like a cherry at the end, and in the tip is a little hole, out of which comes the dangerous stuff which makes the little babies!'
'Oh, my!'
'Well, the head is shaped there like a bell. It is bluish purple round the lower rim, which rim forms a regular shoulder. You can slip the moveable skin right off the head and behind the shoulder, and there it will stay, unless it is forcibly put back again. Underneath the nose, as I will take it, of the prick, the moveable skin is fastened, not far behind the point, and when the stand or stiffness is gone out of the prick this fastening pulls the cap over its head again!'
'How very curious! How convenient!'
'Well, now. Under the prick, nearly as far back, but not quite, as the place where it springs from, is a very
