about haggling over the price of their bodies, just as if they had been ordinary women of the street.
Certainly the profits of the establishment appeared to be considerable; and one day, after a particularly good lunch, Madame Karl surprised me with her tale of the business done for the day.
“You remember the pretty little girl in the blue costume who came in here this morning,” she said, “the one I left upstairs with you?”
I remembered perfectly well.
“She is Lord Wetlon's daughter. They are not at all well off, but naturally she loves pretty clothes. Well, you recollect the dark little gentleman who came in afterwards, whom you left up there with her. He is Christopher Echsstein, the broker. What she did for it, I don't know, but he ordered 250 pounds worth of dresses for her, and, what is more, gave me a check in advance. He's a true Jew, he wanted the discount.”
Madame had four assistants, all pretty girls, and each one of them hot as they make them. She didn't pay them much, but I reckon they had nothing to complain of about the little extra bits they made out of the husbands of some of her customers.
Of course, I attracted the attention, to say nothing of the lustful glances, of more than one of Madame's trouser clad customers. Little Blanche was not the sort of beauty to go many days through her career without causing some masculine head to turn, or some masculine sexual members to press against the confining trousers in dumb protest. But the fools dared no more than a passing glance I think they feared offending Madame Karl. Sometimes I was glad of their reticence, yet often again I so boiled over with desire to be made love to that I could have boxed the ears of several nice young men, who when left alone with me, looked their desire, but mad.',' no attempt to express it in more forceful, to say nothing of more pleasant, form. T honestly believe they thought me a virgin, I had looked so young, for you must remember that I was not yet quite out of short frocks. Thai-is to say, I wore a long gown and put up my hair in the evening, but the day time usually found my red-brown tresses gathered into a loose knot at the back of my neck and my ankles delightfully displaced by a short skirt which only journeyed three parts of the way down my calves. In fact, I was still a flapper.
“What's the meaning of that word?” interrupted Gladys. “I know of course its significance, but what's the actual derivation of the expression?”
“Flapper, why the technical term for little ducks, stupid; haven't you ever heard of men going flapper shooting?”
To continue, “A little duck” I certainly looked, especially when I sat down and showed my pretty, rounded calves well up to the knee.
But, as I was saying, I occasionally felt almost uncontrollable pangs of naughtiness, and I am afraid that the fore-finger of my right hand was sometimes put to most improper uses, how I wished it had been a masculine digit. Once when Madame Karl and I were unusually confident (we were sitting over our tea and cigarettes and the fire), I let drop a hint of this- She was asking me about my seduction, and I told her that, although it was not all roses at the time, I would willingly have another try at fornication to relieve my lascivious feelings.
“And so you shall, dear little girl,” she said, coming over to me and kissing me lovingly. “Why nearly all the men who come here have begged of me to approach you on the subject, but I didn't like to.”
And so it was arranged, I was to go wrong with Lord X-.
“A Lord, Tut! tut!” this from Gladys.
“Oh, I've worked through pretty well and all the grades of the peerage in my time,” I answered, “once I had a Viscount and a Duke in the same day.”
“And that reminds me of a story,” says Gladys. “It concerns itself, does this little yarn, with a parson's wife, who by no means got all the pleasure she wanted out of her husband, the anaemic incumbent of a swagger west end parish. And it seems that it came to pass that one fine day Lord “So and So” visited her in the absence of her husband. Hearing someone coming she bade the Lord conceal himself on the top of the ancient four poster. He did so; but it was not her husband, only Sir C-, who had likewise went under the bed like a rabbit. This time it was her husband, come home randy for once in a way (he had been taking a girl's class) and he wanted it, too; and had it. At the conclusion, he remarked to his better-half, “Ah Mary, I sometimes think you have not always been as good a woman as you should have been, but trust in the Lord above, He will look after you-.”
“Oh, will he?” came a voice from above the canopy. “Then what about that bugger of a baronet underneath?”
It was arranged very artistically. I was not going to have it given away that I was a previously consenting party to the affair. Madame Karl, in the course of a casual conversation with Lord X, mentioned me; he declared his desire; she suggested he should go up to my bedroom, enter as if he had made a mistake (she told him that I would be undressing at the time), and it rested on his own initiative to complete the job.
I was undressing, that is to say I was pretty well in Eve's costume. Madame had warned me by speaking tube when he was nearly at the door, and when he entered he found me all stark naked but my chemise, and that fallen to my feet. Of course I uttered the time honored scream, covered my face with one hand and my mons veneris with the other, ran hither and thither about the room as if seeking cover and murmured, “Oh go away; please!”
But he didn't go; he rushed at me, pulled one hand from my face and kissed me on the lips; pulled the other hand from my cunt and felt it, in fact, in about one moment he had got me down on the bed and his prick was well into me, not one single word did he say till I could feel him coming and the first part of the entertainment was over. As I lay back on the bed, panting, while he rather shamefacedly put back his penis into his trousers, I managed to gasp out: “well! What a funny way to make love to a girl! Don't you ever say anything?”
He laughed, “I'm glad you're not furious,” he said, “but to tell the truth I was awfully nervous.”
“Nervous.” He need not have been, for I don't mind betting I wanted it even more than he that blessed afternoon. “Nervous.” How many a beautiful chance of exquisite sexual intercourse has been wasted by this wretched nervousness on the part of Mankind. I can call to mind a tale concerning a nervous person who asked another young man how he made small talk at parties, declaring himself always dumb on these occasions. “Oh, I don't worry much about frills in my conversation,” was the answer, “I just get the girl in a quiet corner, squeeze her hand and ask her if she likes fucking.”
“But my dear chap,” was the answer, “what an awful thing to say; I should think you would get yourself badly disliked sometimes and get thrown out of some houses.”
“Well,” admitted the candid one, “I do get disliked sometimes and I have been thrown out of houses, but I get a hell of a lot of fucking.”
MORAL-Oh-Mankind, remember that the woman is as often as not, as keen for it as you are-and don't be NERVOUS.
After that we got on splendidly. He undressed, was soon stiff and in again, and we had a long, glorious, slow grind, exquisite pleasure the whole time, and always that delightful feeling that there was much more ahead, not just a few more strokes and the business completed. Twice was all I would allow him, though he wanted more. I made him sponge me all over with hot scented water, rub me down till I glowed deliciously, and dress me. He was no novice at the game, and the teasing little kisses with which he would accompany all the business of drawing on my stockings, fastening my drawers, getting me into my corsets, etc., nearly made me fall again. When dressed at last, we went downstairs. I just found time to whisper to Madame Karl that it was satisfactorily done, and we got a cab and went off to have tea at Claridge's room among all the ambassadors.
Madame Karl seemed thoroughly pleased when I got back home. She was all over me, and gave me a hat lately arrived from Paris which I had coveted muchly. And as my lordling friend had bought me a diamond brooch at Streeter's, I did fairly well.
The secret of what I had done did not remain a secret-I don't know how it got to the ears of the girls, but after dinner, when we had all together that evening, one of them got me alone in a corner of the drawing room and whispered, “So you've been with Lord X-, this afternoon?” My blush was sufficient answer.
“Come out with me this evening,” she whispered, tickling my hand, “I can promise you a lot of fun.”
Her tone, and the gesture with which she accompanied her invitation, gave me full well to understand that something naughty was in the wind-“Must I ask Madame Karl's permission?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“My dear little Nemmy,” said Madame Karl, when I told her, “of course you can go, but I warn you that this will be something quite out of the common. Nelly knows more than a bit.”
Now you mustn't run away with the idea that Madame Kirl kept a bad house in the sense that her assistants
