The Bride of Bowmanor

by Helen Highwater

  

Chapter Four

I complain of my high-heels, and tight corset, and am soundly slapped. Back to my corner. A delicious hour. A delightful dance. The punishment of the glass-boxes and a fit of hysterics. The evening ends pleasantly. Almost contented to remain a girl.

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The minutes passed slowly. A little clock upon the mantelshelf struck the quarter, and afterwards the hour.

"Miss Priscilla," I said again. "What is it?"

"Mayn't I be released now? My feet ache so, arched over high-heels."

"If you knew how pretty and smart you looked Denise, standing in your corner, you would never want to come out of it," she said calmly.

"But my corset hurts me, it's so tight, and my fetters gall my ankles. Oh Miss Priscilla I am so unhappy," I said piteously.

Miss Priscilla rose with a cry of annoyance. She came over to my comer, felt my hands, stooped and felt my legs.

"The hands will do as they are," she said. "But your feet are hot, and the fetters tight. We can't have your pretty ankles swollen."

She took the little key from the mantelshelf and unlocked the fetters. What a relief it was! She unfastened the train of my dress from about my knees, and let it drop on the ground.

"Sit down there."

She pointed to the sofa. I stumbled across the room and sat down; my legs were numbed.

"Give me your feet."

Miss Priscilla knelt down in front of me and with her clever skilful hands, trained in hospital work; she massaged my ankles, taking the stiffness out of my joints in a moment or two.

"There! Now the pretty things won't swell up", she said.

"Oh thank you Miss Priscilla," I said gratefully. "Stand up Denise!"

I obeyed. She unhooked my dress at the back, first taking off my sash. Then feeling under my cache-corset she loosened my corset laces. Oh what a joy it was to draw in a deep breath, to be relieved of the constriction about my waist, and of the painful binding about my hips.

Then to my dismay I felt my drawers slipping down. In loosening my corset laces, Miss Priscilla had by mistake, as I thought, untied the strings of my pantalon. I felt a delicacy in mentioning the fact to her. I pressed my thighs together and held the pantalon up at my knees. It was very uncomfortable. But I should soon have my hands untied, I hoped, and I could then slip upstairs and rearrange myself. Suddenly however I felt a violent tug.

"Draw in your breath Denise, and expel it! That is right," and Miss Priscilla drew in my corsets tighter than ever, and tied the laces.

"Oh it's worse than before," I moaned.

"Hold your tongue," she answered in her calm peaceful voice, "or I'll lace you up in stay laces from your neck to the tips of your satin-slippers." What a terrible threat! She hooked up my dress, readjusted my sash about my waist and then thrust her hand inside my skirt.

"Where are the frills of your drawers?" She seized them.

"Open your legs Denise." She pulled the drawers down to my ankles. It was not by mistake then that she had untied the strings. She had meant to do it. Why?

I was soon to know. Miss Priscilla sat down upon the sofa and sedately smoothed her silk skirt over her knees. Then she drew on and buttoned her long satin shining gloves.

"Come to me Denise."

I shuffled forward shamefacedly, my pantalon clogging my ankles and lace frills frothing about my satin slippers in the most untidy fashion until I reached Miss Priscilla's side. Then she seized me and with a sudden effort flung me across her knees face downwards.

"Oh Miss Priscilla," I cried startled out of my wits.

"What are you going to do with me?" She took up my skirt with its long train and turning it back, heaped the rich satin folds about my back. My thighs, my buttocks were exposed naked.

"Oh, oh!" I protested my cheeks fiery with shame.

"I am going to slap this white soft fat girl's bottom", said Miss Priscilla, as calmly as if she were in the habit of doing it every day. "I am going to teach you Denise not to complain when you are placed in the comer."

,

"But Miss Priscilla, you yourself admitted that the steel fetters were too cruel."

"I didn't admit that your corset was too tight, or that your pretty heels were too high."

She began to pinch between her satin gloved fingers the white flesh. "Oh Miss Priscilla, remember that I am eighteen," I protested.

"You must first remember it yourself, dear, and not behave as if you were six." She raised her gloved hand and brought it down with a resounding slap upon my quivering bottom. I could not endure it. The satin-glove stung my tender flesh, but the childlike character of the chastisement stung my soul. I lashed out with my legs trying to kick my feet free from the delicate fetters of my batiste drawers. But the frills clung about my toes, and caught on the high- heels and diamond buckles of my shoes.

"It's abominable," I cried, "to treat me like a little girl."

But the satin-gloved hand rose pitilessly again and came down heavily upon naked and helpless flesh. I moaned, I plunged, I writhed upon Miss Priscilla's knees. I kicked, I strained impotently at the ribbons which bound my hands.

Miss Priscilla laughed mincingly, as she looked down at my extended form.

"Really Denise, your skin is delightfully soft and tender. They must have taken a great deal of trouble with your body at the girls' school. I don't blame you for kicking your legs about in this wanton fashion, but I must take precautions so that you shan't spoil your beautiful satin slippers."

She raised me up and placed me sitting on the sofa.

Then she knelt on one knee in front of me, and flung my dress up above my knees.

"Stretch the dainty things out on to my knee, Denise, I will muffle and tie them up in your drawers. Otherwise you will in your struggles break your buckles against the furniture, or catch them in my dress.

I obeyed and she wrapped the batiste drawers round my slippers rightly making a pad of the lace frills to protect my diamond buckles, and then with a satin ribbon she tied my feet up in a parcel.

She resumed her seat and pulled me over her knees again on my face. She raised her gloved hand and began smacking me again with all her might. I shivered and prayed for mercy, in vain. The tears filled my eyes. Nor were the pain and disgrace all I suffered. F or while she smacked me she lectured me, and every word seemed chosen to inflame me and trouble my passions.

"What a dignified position" - smack - "for a young lady dressed in the extreme of fashion - "smack, smack."To lie across a lap, her white shoulders rising from an exquisite décolleté frock, her gloved arms bound behind her, her satin skirt turned back, her smartly shod feet muffled up in her drawers" - smack, smack, smack, smack, - "while an old woman whom she despises," - smack, - "slaps her naked flesh," slap, slap, slap. "What a disgrace," smack - "If you only knew how ridiculous and pretty you looked with your high satin-covered heels sticking out from the lace frills" slap - "of your elegant drawers," smack, smack.

The tears ran down my face. I was being treated like a child. I sobbed like a child. Yet all the while I knew that I was not a child at all.

She finished at last, stood me up, drew up my pantalon and fastened the strings about my waist, loosening my corset and dress to enable her to do it. Oh how ashamed I was. How I blushed to feel her hands dressing me as if I was a baby.

She laced me up tightly again, corset and frock, tied my ankles together with a white satin ribbon tied in a big bow and passed through a diamond buckle. Then holding me, she made me hop in a most humiliating manner back into my comer once more.

It was nine o'clock when I was first placed in the comer. The clock struck ten as Miss Priscilla put me back there, lifting up my chin, drawing back my shoulders, adjusting my feet, turning out my toes as much as my ankle strap allowed her to do.

"Now will you stand quietly dear?" she asked.

"Yes Miss Priscilla," I said humbly and still weeping.

"That's right, Denise. You can't imagine how delicious you look standing here tied up in your smart clothes. Now remember Miss Helen's advice. You are to think of your rounded insteps in their open-worked silk stockings, your little feet in their lovely pearl-embroidered slippers with the gossamer bows, the flashing buckles, the extravagantly high-heels, peeping out from a nest of billowy white frills of tulle and satin. Think how you have been punished in them."

I wriggled my knees.

"Ah you are thinking of the dainty slippered feet," she said with a smile.

That was her policy - a double one. To punish me into abject subjection and then to make my love and crave for punishment by associating with it in my mind voluptuous images, which provoked my passions, and by flattering my girlish vanity with enervating, effeminatizing soft words. And she was succeeding. I obeyed her.

I thought of my dainty high-heeled slippers shining and sparkling below my satin dress, heel to heel as I stood in the comer. The minutes flashed by. I was delighted to feel the height of my heels, to catch a glimpse of my buckled toes, to realize that I must not move them, since I was undergoing punishment at a woman's hands. The clock struck eleven to my intense surprise. I had been standing for two hours in the comer. The door opened, Miss Helen, Lady Hartley, and Violet Hunt came into the room. I heard music and the sound of voices in the ballroom. I longed to be free.

"How has Denise behaved Auntie?" asked Miss Helen.

"She was troublesome at first. She would talk. So I took her pretty pantalon down, tied up her feet in them so that she shouldn't break her slipper-buckles and gave her a sound slapping across my knee."

I blushed with shame.

Violet cried "Splendid". Miss Priscilla resumed.

"But for the last hour she has been standing very prettily in her comer without a word."

Miss Helen came over to me.

"Have you been thinking of what I told you darling?" "Yes Miss Helen," I replied blushing more than ever.

Oh how determined those two women were under all their loving terms and dainty endearments to corrupt and make me of no account in their sinister way.

"Then I will set you free as a reward." She did so and added. "Now go to the ball-room and dance and enjoy yourself" I was delighted.

"But mind darling that you only dance with girls", she said with a warning nod, and she explained to Lady Hartley: "That is part of Denise's punishment."

I was delighted to have an excuse not to dance with men, even as humiliating an excuse as this was. I went into the ballroom, which led out, on the other side of the big drawing room. It was a beautiful room with a perfect floor. There were a good many people whom Miss Helen had brought up from the village; luckily more girls than men, so that I had a still better excuse. I was able to say that as I was staying in the house, it was my duty to see that the visitors had partners. I danced with Violet, and Miss Hartley, and other girls, - and I loved it. I had been beautifully taught and I knew that I danced very well. Violet too, was a good dancer. Oh to swing round in a waltz with her to the sound of languorous music, our little slippers flashing in and out, weaving and interweaving the steps yet never touching, - it was delicious. At midnight we all went into the dining room to supper, and were as merry as we could be. Cigarettes followed. Oh how sorry I was when the guests began to go. Miss Priscilla took me aside. She had a new pair of long white gloves in her hand.

"You must have these put on Denise. You have soiled those you are wearing." She smoothed them over my arms, and buttoned them.

"Have you also soiled your slippers?"

"No, Miss Priscilla. The ballroom floor is as clean as a new tablecloth."

"Let me see!" I swept my frock aside and showed her my feet. "Yes, you need not change them," she said.

I had forgotten all about my punishment. I saw Miss Helen saying goodbye to a crowd of guests at the drawing-room door. I wondered whether she had not forgotten it too. I thought that if I could slip by up to my room, I might escape altogether. I tried to, but Miss Helen saw me between the heads of some girls she was shaking hands with and cried out pleasantly:

"You mustn't go yet, Denise dear."

She continued saying goodbye to her girl friends but introduced into her farewells in order to punish me for trying to escape, humiliating orders which I had to obey before them all. Her words ran like this:

"Goodbye Dora... Come and stand beside me Denise - Must you really go Iris? - not like that Denise, but with your face to the wall of course and your hands behind your back. I shall see you to-morrow Mrs. Rivers, shan't I? Are the heels of your dancing slippers neatly together, Denise?"

All went at last. Miss Helen took me by the hand. "Come with me," she said. There were only Lady Hartley and Miss Priscilla, and Lady Hartley's daughter left in the drawing room. She touched a spring in the wall and a panel slid aside, showing another room of which I had not guessed the existence. The house had been greatly altered during the years of my absence.

"This Denise," said Miss Helen with a smile of anticipation, "is the punishment room."

Lady Hartley turned to her daughter. "Wait here Phyllis," she said. She followed Miss Helen, Miss Priscilla, and myself into the punishment room. It was a small room, prettily furnished with a bright fire glowing on the hearth.

Miss Helen closed the panel as soon as we had entered and at once it appeared that the room had no door to it. It was furnished in mahogany and white satin. On the floor a thick carpet covered with white satin made luxurious walking. The walls were all thickly padded with white satin and the light was only admitted through a skylight over which at this moment heavy curtains of white velvet were drawn. Of the designation of the room at a first glance no one would have guessed. At a second, one would have noticed some sinister particulars. Across the ceiling a grooved gilt wheel ran on a strong rail and from the groove of the wheel, a thick strong gold rope depended. The wheel was worked by a small lever in the wall and at this moment was in a comer of the ceiling with the rope tied to a hook. On the ottomans and chairs I noticed a gleam of steel rings and bars, and one long flat sofa was furnished at the end with a pair of stocks. But what most terrified me was a mahogany chair raised an inch or two from the ground on a solid frame. It was luxuriously padded and cushioned in white satin. Yet its aspect appalled me.

"Sit down dear", said Miss Helen pushing me towards it. I advanced timidly in my satin slippers, mounted the frame and sat down in the chair. Miss Helen fixed a strong satin strap round my waist, buckling it tightly behind the chair. To the back other straps were attached, and these she fastened over my shoulders, drawing them tight under each arm. My body and bust were thus securely imprisoned. The chair was furnished with short arms thickly padded in white satin and an inch or two beyond the extremities of the arms two strange square boxes of glass were supported on steel pedestals fixed into the frame of the chair. On the sides of these boxes facing the arms of the chair were holes thickly padded with white satin for the wrists, the upper part of the glass sliding upwards in grooves to admit the hands. The other sides and the bottom of the boxes were covered with looking glass and little bulbs of electric light placed at the comers, flung a strong light upon the interior. The top surfaces of the boxes like the sides facing the chair were of glass. Miss Helen lifted up the sliding portions of the glass.

"Lay your arms flat upon the arms of the chair, Denise darling, so that your hands are in the boxes, and your wrists rest in the glass grooves," she said in her most honeyed accents. "The palms of your gloved hands uppermost dear."

I obeyed her in dreadful alarm. Lady Hartley looked on in delighted curiosity, while Miss Priscilla strapped down my elbows and forearms with satin straps to the arms and rested in the glass holes of the boxes, my hands being quite inside the boxes. Miss Helen then slid down the upper pieces of glass, and made them fast by locking a steel bar along the tops. My wrists were now hermetically imprisoned in these glass pillories. I could twitch my satin-glove fingers inside the boxes, and I did so, making the brilliant light play upon the smooth shining white satin-gloves. But I could do no more, I could not close my hands they were held open palm upwards.

In front of me at the end of the frame, supported also upon steel pedestals, was a bigger box of the same make as the boxes for the hands. Only in this bigger box there were holes for the ankles a little apart from each other and raised so that with my feet in the boxes they would be in a straight line with my knees as I sat in the chair.

"Raise your legs dear, and insert your dainty feet", said Miss Helen. She flung back my skirt exposing my silk stockinged legs, my garters, and even the frills, which decorated my knees. Timidly I raised my legs and inserted my feet into the box, letting my legs rest in the grooves made for them, while Miss Helen held up the upper slide of glass. As soon as my legs were in position she slid down and secured the glass, tightly fitting me into this strange pair of glass stocks.

My legs fitted very tightly into the holes just where the calves began to swell, so that my ankles as well as my feet were enclosed in glass-boxes. Miss Helen turned on the lights in each of the boxes and at once a flood of bright illumination sparkled on slippers and buckles, stockings and gloves, and flung up the dazzling reflections of the dainty things in the most fascinating way. Then Miss Helen by means of a little silver knob on the outside of each box drew out for an inch or two the mirrors which formed the bottoms, and disclosed shallow cavities underneath. At once, from these cavities a brown dust whirled out and flew about the boxes as if driven by a wind. The brown dust settled on my shining white gloves, my smart glistening slippers, and my gleaming stockings of silk. I could move my fingers. I could also work my toes and insteps up and down though I could not twist my feet from side to side. I worked both hands and feet to shake the dust off in vain and then I felt two or three sharp pricks on my insteps and others on the palms of my hands at the small opening of the gloves. I shook my hands and feet more violently and then I began to feel the pricks all over my ankles and feet wherever my stockings were open-worked and all over my hands too. Meanwhile the little clouds of brown dust spun about the boxes.

A suspicion of the truth dawned upon me. I was seized with a dreadful irritation wherever the dust touched my flesh. I could not lean forward, for I was strapped firmly back in my chair. But I fixed my eyes upon my twisting fingers, my twitching feet; and I discovered the truth.

"Oh, Oh!" I cried. "Miss Helen, the specks of brown dust are fleas. You are punishing me in my new satin-gloves, my satin slippers, and my dainty stockings with fleas! Oh! They torture me. It's horrible."

And in a frenzy I worked my feet, I twisted and clenched my fingers. It was of course all in vain. My ankles, my insteps, my hands were at the mercy of these obscene insects and they simply devoured me.

Lady Hartley was in raptures.

"What a delightful punishment for a pretty girl!" she cried. "To tie her into a chair in her lovely evening frock and then to give her satin-slippered feet and slender little ankles in their exquisite stockings to fleas to devour and punish! I think you are wonderfully clever, Miss Deverel."

Miss Helen smiled in acknowledgment of the praise.

"It is at all events an appropriate punishment," she answered modestly. "Denise is being punished for her vanity in making a coquettish display of her little buckled slippers and dainty feet. To hand them over in their finery to fleas seemed to me the best way of teaching her humility."

They stood and complacently watched me as I writhed and twisted in my bonds. The fleas were driving me mad. They got inside my stockings, down under my slippers, round my ankles and bit me terribly. They were ravenous. My hands too were helpless. The fleas were inside my gloves, between my fingers, everywhere. My feet and hands twisted in their glass prisons. The mirrors reflected back to me with irony my flashing buckles, my dainty bows and heels, and the tightly fitting elegant long gloves.

"Oh, oh! the torture is excruciating," I cried. "Oh Miss Helen you are cruel! I am being eaten up. The irritation is driving me out of my senses." I burst into tears, I tugged at my legs and arms to break the glass and free myself. I felt the blood rush to my face. I was growing delirious.

"It's a disgusting punishment," I moaned. Miss Helen laughed.

"Is it indeed Denise? I don't allow young ladies to use such language about my punishment, which I feel it, my duty to inflict upon them. If the fleas are disgusting to your delicate sensibilities, what I wonder will you say to this?"

Into the tops of the glass boxes little silver boxes were let in, one over each gloved-hand, one over each satin-slippered foot. Miss Helen touched a spring in each of these boxes and the bottom, which in each case was inside the glass box, fell down upon a hinge. And to my inexpressible loathing from each box there dropped a horrible fat, big, slimy worm. There were four of them. One dropped on to the satin-gloved palm of each hand, one on to the pearl- embroidered toe of each of my slippers. I uttered a piercing scream of horror. I suppose that it was very feminine of me, but I couldn't help it. The sight of those loathsome fat worms on my pretty gloves and shoes filled me with nausea. I shuddered. I felt that I was going to be sick.

"Oh take them off! Take them off," I screamed. I shook my hands and feet in a panic. Then the worms began to crawl! Oh it was revolting. They crawled over my toes leaving a disgusting brown trail of slime on the dazzling sheen of my white satin shoes. They mounted on to the buckles and bows. They were crawling towards my open-worked stockings. Oh I should feel them on my flesh. Perhaps they were poisonous too, I thought in my panic. They were crawling about my fingers as well. I touched one with the tips of my fingers as I closed one hand spasmodically and the soft feel of it as it moved and wriggled caused me to shriek again. .

"Oh Miss Helen! Please set me free!" I moaned. "It's a horrible punishment."

The tears poured down my face. My slipper-buckles flashed and mashed in a thousand many coloured rays as I arched and bent my feet to shake them off.

"That's a wonderful punishment," said Lady Hartley.

"It appeals to the imagination as well as to the body. Ugh! The slime on the dainty slippers and the shining tight white satin-gloves! How ashamed of herself Denise ought to be!"

I interrupted her with a yell. One of the worms had crawled inside my left glove and I felt it wriggling on the flesh of my palm. It was unendurable. Then I felt something wet and soft crawling over my insteps. The worms were on my stockings, feeding on the silk and lace. My screams redoubled. The chair shook with my frantic struggles. All the while too the fleas were biting and torturing me!

Miss Helen watched me complacently. She was delighted with the success of her bizarre experiment. She listened to my sobs and screams; she watched my tear-stained face revelling in my abasement and sufferings. Then, with her hypocritical kindness, she said: "The lesson, darling, you have to learn is this. If you were wearing high boots and thick stockings you would not mind the worms. Therefore the more daintily you are dressed, the more careful you must be to be obedient and modest."

I interrupted her sermon with a scream. One of the worms had crawled through the open-worked pattern and was inside my stocking clinging to my flesh. It was the last straw. I went off into a fit of hysterics. I screamed and laughed, and sobbed all at once. My face flushed red and was convulsed. I was going mad. Even Lady Hartley was terrified by my appearance.

"She has been sufficiently punished, Miss Helen," she said.

Miss Helen took a little tube with an india rubber ball at the end. She pressed the tube through a tiny hole in the glass closed by india rubber and only opening from pressure from without. Squeezing the ball at the end of the tube, she discharged into the boxes one after the other a strong insecticide powder, which at once killed the fleas and worms. Then Phoebe stripped my stockings down my legs. Miss Helen released me from the stocks, my gloves, shoes, and stockings were taken off and left in the glass-boxes to be destroyed. I was still sobbing bitterly, shaken with convulsions and shivering fits and tortured by the irritation of the fleabites.

Lady Hartley said good-night and went away with her daughter, while Phoebe brought a basin of warm water in which some herbs had been soaked and bathed my inflamed and swollen hands, ankles, and feet.

"There's no reason for you to go into hysterics, Miss Denise," she said with a rough kindness as she knelt at my feet, bathing me. "This infusion will soon cool your legs, and remove the irritation, and to-morrow morning there won't be a mark on your pretty white skin."

Miss Helen herself was by this time a little alarmed. She brought me a large glass of champagne saying, "I did not realize how completely soft and girlish you had become, dear."

"But you meant me to become soft and girlish," I said between my sobs. "You and Miss Priscilla sent me to a girls' school for two years and knew the system applied to me."

"Oh yes, darling," said Miss Helen patting my bare white shoulders affectionately. "Of course, we meant to punish you by giving you permanently the figure, the pretty breasts, and the lovely face of a girl and to please ourselves by dressing you in exquisite clothes suitable to your looks. But we did not hope that the system would be so delightfully successful as it has been in changing your haughty spirit into a girl's timid and shrinking disposition. However we know now, and I promise you that we will not punish you with the glass-boxes again unless you should make it absolutely necessary."

"Thank you Miss Helen," I said gratefully. Even at the time I remarked a strange and significant change in me. I was not angry and resentful because she had punished me and thrown me into hysterics. I seemed to recognize that she had the right to do what she pleased with me.

The irritation was soothed by the healing infusion of herbs with which Phoebe bathed me; I recovered from my hysterics; my sobs ceased. Phoebe dried my legs, and put on to them a fresh pair of silk stockings and satin slippers and I stood up.

"I am very tired," I said. "I will go to bed."

"Before you go to bed Denise," said Miss Priscilla calmly, "you will have to have a long conversation with me in my boudoir."

"Oh please not to-night! I am exhausted." Miss Priscilla was implacable.

"To-morrow you are to be dressed as a young gentleman again. It is necessary that our conversation should take place while you are still wearing your girl's clothes. "

I was worn out by the punishments and experiences of the day. "Then I will wear girl's clothes for one more day," I said. Miss Helen laughed.

"Really dear, it is not for you to make bargains with us. If you wear girls' clothes to-morrow to please yourself, you will wear them as long as I choose to please me."

"Oh Miss Helen!" I cried piteously.

 

I did not know what to do. The long conversation I was to have with Miss Priscilla frightened me. I was too tired. I was not fit for it. I should say anything that she wished me to say. On the other hand if I were to agree that it should take place to-morrow Miss Helen might keep me dressed as a girl for another year. And I was to be a man. I had a future. But in front of my eyes there rose the vision of the young girl I had seen in the mirror, with her pretty face, her curls, her white throat, her beautifully gowned figure, her gloved-hands, her feet in their little buckled satin high-heeled slippers. Oh I should not mind if Miss Helen did keep me dressed as a girl for a year. I said, "Very well Miss Helen! I consent. Miss Priscilla shall talk to me to-morrow and you shall keep me as a girl until you are willing to let me become a man again."

I blushed, Miss Helen rippled over with delight.

"Darling we'll make you happy," she cried and she kissed me. "Even to-night you shall begin to realize the privileges and liberty of a pretty young lady. You shall have a book to read in bed."

And so Miss Helen sent me to bed. Phoebe was waiting in my room and unfastened me from my dress, took it and hung it in the long wardrobe, which housed the collection of evening gowns. Other wardrobes held day clothes. Phoebe went into the next room and brought to me the baby for my evening suckle. I sat in my underclothes and still in my high heels and Phoebe laid the baby on a tray, which Miss Helen had had made specially, and wheeled the tray up to my breasts. Phoebe took my nipple and placed it in the baby's mouth and after a few seconds the baby latched on and started to suck hard. I was never allowed to touch the baby, but the feelings in my breast and in my heart when it sucked are difficult to describe. I could feel the milk coursing down through my breast and into the baby's mouth. The action made me almost swoon, it was so intense. Phoebe stood and monitored the progress of the flow, and when she decided, the baby was taken off, the tray reversed and the baby latched on to the other breast. When it was sated, Phoebe took the baby into the next room, and returned to continue my routine. I never knew who the babies were, who waited in the next room to deliver and remove them, or what they were told. Miss Helen told me that it was not my business. I was only to supply the milk when demanded.

Phoebe now ran my bath, the unpleasant one, when it was ready; she led me to the bathroom and removed my shoes, stockings, pantalon, and corset. This brief time I was allowed in the bath was the only time I was not corseted. When Phoebe had washed me all over, she lifted me from the bath and I stood while she dried me carefully. Then she took the ointment which Miss Priscilla prepared and rubbed it carefully, thoroughly, slowly, into all parts of my skin, taking particular care with my breasts and bottom and hips.

Next she laced me into the night corset. Here she was at her most jovial as she knew that this corset being tighter and longer than my day corsets, Miss Helen said that as I did not have to bend or move it was a fine opportunity to reduce my waist even more, it was even more frightful for me and she took pleasure in pulling up the laces as tight as she could. She led me to the dressing table and sat me on the stool facing it. Before she applied the night cream to my face she strapped to my feet my night shoes. These were metal plates, which took the form of the sole of a high heeled shoe, but without the heel. Phoebe strapped them tightly to my feet, which bent them and formed them as if I were still wearing high heels. In fact I estimated that if heels had been fitted then they would have had to be six inches at least. Of course with my feet strapped into these I could not walk and so sat while Phoebe applied the creams and oils to my skin, and then began the long process of putting the rag rollers in my hair. Each strand of my long hair was separated and wrapped in the strip of cloth and tied up. In the morning when Phoebe reversed this process my hair fell in curls and waves about my white shoulders and bosom. When all the rags were tied, Phoebe opened the large cupboard containing my nightgowns and allowed me to choose one. I loved this as this cupboard contained the most wonderful concoctions of satin and tulle and lace, froths and waves of it. At last I chose one for tonight and Phoebe brought it to me and poured it over my head and fastened it about me. Finally ready for bed, Phoebe lifted me and carried me in her strong arms to the swan shaped bed, placed me between the white satin sheets and tucked me carefully in. Lying there in my warm smooth bed, tucked so tightly than I could not pull the sheets loose, with my feet strapped into the arc of high shoes, my insteps taught, and my corset pulling my waist smaller and smaller I finally drifted off to sleep.

  

  

  

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