It was a trivial victory, yet served to keep her unbowed as day followed day, with only the meals and the occasional glimmer of light through her breathing holes to judge the passage of time. Now, for maybe the thousandth time, her thoughts turned to her failed escape bid and the knowledge that had she only held her temper with Virtue Brooke she would probably be sipping tea in the drawing room of the Dover Street house, or perhaps strolling through St James’ Park with Miss Challis, to admire the flowers and talk with friends and acquaintances.
Inevitably the chain of thought led to the way Mr Ormondroyd had buggered her on the moor, and the need to play with herself over the memory, something she had so far stubbornly resisted. To have reacted so wantonly with an old, dirty cottager’s cock up her bottom was bad enough, but to have sucked it, willingly, and to want to come over the memory, was unbearably shameful. Yet she knew that if she began to play with her quim that was where her thoughts would lead her, and time and time again she had held off.
It was still hard, with nothing else to do, and she was wondering if she could keep her mind focussed on the beauty of sex with Elizabeth for long enough when she heard the door open and the light from the air holes grew suddenly brighter. She sat up and closed her thighs, taking a petticoat to cover her nudity as the latch of the box was drawn back. The black skirts of a chaperone appeared, with a second further back and two bare legs between, long, sturdy, but smooth and feminine.
‘In,’ a voice ordered, and Thrift risked peering forward as Sally-Anne, naked but for a pair of torn and soiled drawers, was pushed down into the box beside her.
Miss Habberwick and Mrs Ormondroyd were in the room, both with their straps in their hands. Thrift glanced from one to the other, wondering if she was due to come back. Mrs Ormondroyd was already walking towards the door, but Miss Habberwick spoke as she closed the box.
‘Second offence, one week.’
‘A week!’ Thrift sighed as the bolt was slid home.
‘No talking!’ Miss Habberwick’s voice sounded from outside, and a moment later the door had clicked to behind her.
Sally-Anne spoke immediately.
‘Do you suppose there is one of those microphones?’
Thrift stayed quiet for a moment before replying.
‘I don’t think so, but we’ll soon find out.’
Nothing happened, and presently Sally-Anne spoke again, in a low monotone.
‘I got to Blackpool, on the train. I got a place, pulling pints in the George, just off the front.’
‘How then were you caught?’ Thrift asked.
‘The man I sucked to pay my train fare,’ Sally-Anne answered, this time with feeling. ‘He was kind to me. He gave me a fish supper, and let me use his couch to sleep because I was so tired. In the morning he wanted to use my tits to rub between, and so I let him, for an extra five shillings. He even drove me to the station, and saw me onto the train! Then he must telephoned here immediately.’
‘How did he know to come here?’
‘I told him, and that I was hoping to secure work as a barmaid. I trusted him!’
‘So they found you and brought you back? I’m sorry.’
‘I’m stupid, I know. I should never have told him, or said I was going somewhere else, or moved on. I could have taken a ferry, for Ireland perhaps.’
‘You did better than I,’ Thrift answered. ‘I would have been free, only I lost my temper with a brat of a girl, a quality girl too!’
She told her story, Sally-Anne listening but saying nothing until Thrift admitted what Mr Ormondroyd had done to her, leaving out only her own, wanton reaction. Sally-Anne’s response was to reach out an arm and place it gently around Thrift’s shoulders. Thrift responded, no longer caring if the gesture was inappropriate, but cuddling into the big girl’s chest with her head pillowed on the fat breasts.
‘I saw Jane and Joanna,’ she said after a while, ‘and I know Lucy is back. What of the others?’
‘They got Lucy, yes,’ Sally-Anne confirmed, ‘but I’ve not spoken to her, nor the twins.’
‘You were in Blackpool two full days then?’
‘Nearly three. There are a lot of public houses to search in Blackpool. It was Mrs Stokes and Miss Shaw.’
Thrift cuddled a little closer, finding a wonderful security in Sally-Anne’s size, as if she herself were still a child. There was even an instinct to suckle at one of the big breasts, but she bit it down, sure Sally-Anne would only laugh at her if she were to ask, and not having the nerve to simply do it. Yet it was hard to resist, as she knew it would give so much of the comfort she badly needed, and after a while she spoke in an effort to turn her mind elsewhere.
‘How did you come to be brought here at all, Sally, if I may ask? You don’t seem so very wanton, nor the sort to... to sell yourself, unless forced by need?’
‘Gross moral turpitude is what they said,’ Sally-Anne answered, ‘but how was I to know?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Nor do I. I will tell you. Maybe you will, with your fancy education.’
‘I will try,’ Thrift promised.
‘At home,’ Sally-Anne said, ‘I tended the bar, with my father and brothers. My mother does the rooms, and I would help her. We had rooms for professional folk, we did, very select. There was a Dr Mortimer, there was, ever such a polite old man, who’d stop over regular, for his health. The Lincolnshire air was good for him, he said. Never drank much, mind, just a small glass of claret when he came back from his evening walk. Years, we’d known him.’
‘He sounds most a most respectable gentleman,’ Thrift stated.
‘He was,’ Sally-Anne replied, ‘respectable through and through, and when he asked me to do the disciplining for the two little maids what used to attend to him, on account of him being too old to do it proper, I never gave it a second thought. Why would I? He even asked mother, and she didn’t see fault in it.’
Sally-Anne’s voice was full of resentment, which grew stronger as she went on.
‘So I did, and a right handful it was and all. Burmese girls, they was, from where he’d had his practice, in Rangoon. Proper minxes, the pair of them, forever giggling and up to mischief, so you’d think they wanted their tails warmed. There was no learning them their lesson neither. Spank ‘em as hard I could, there’d always be call for more of the same.’
‘What did Dr Mortimer do?’ Thrift asked, taking the thumb she’d been sucking out of her mouth.
‘He was ever so kind, he was,’ Sally-Anne continued. ‘He’d send one of them to fetch me, whichever needed seeing to, though it was both as often as not, and he’d sit and pray while it was done, and read out parts from an improving book while they stood in the corner with their red behinds on show for their shame, not that they had any, little baggages.’
‘He... he didn’t get his cock out or any such behaviour?’
‘Take his pego out? Dr Mortimer? Why, the idea! He used to get hard, in his trousers, but that’s only nature, that is, with two pretty girls bare arsed right in front of his eyes, but he used to pray to overcome his weakness. There was nothing improper, I swear it, not ever.’
‘You... you didn’t make them lick you, or anything?’
‘Not ever! The idea, in front of old Dr Mortimer!’
‘You... you make me!’
‘Not with gentlemen watching, I don’t, and then only because that Kirsty says I should. Not that it’s not nice, mind.’
‘Kirsty’s cruel,’ Thrift answered, ‘she makes me do it because I’m quality, but I can’t help my birth!’
‘You don’t seem to mind, so much?’
‘I... I can’t help it! And what about that horrid dunking you gave me!?’
‘It was just in fun...’
‘Fun!’
‘...and you did get
us all beaten. Rough play, it was, nothing more.’
‘Pushing my head in a full potty!’
‘It was only pee. No harm in a drop of pee, and you do give yourself airs.’
‘Airs! I am of a noble family!’
‘Here you’re the same as us. Miss Scarsdale said so. You do make such a fuss, and all, and it does make me laugh. Like when we made you show your cunt, that first night, my but what a tantrum your threw about it!’
‘A tantrum! Wouldn’t you!?’
‘We was only taking a peep, all girls together like. Don’t you do that with your friends, to see who’s been up to mischief?’
‘No! The very idea!’
‘Well I’m sure I don’t know... but... but I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.’
‘You...,’ Thrift began, and broke off, thinking of Virtue Brooke. ‘No, I’m sorry too, Sally-Anne. I was being a brat. You were right to punish me. But, what of Dr Mortimer? You say there was no impropriety?’
‘None whatsoever, there wasn’t. I’d spank his maids for him and he’d give me a shilling for my trouble, and that would be that. Looking back, perhaps they got wet over it, like yourself...’
‘I expect they did,’ Thrift broke in, flushing hot at Sally-Anne’s words.
‘Maybe they did,’ Sally-Anne admitted, ‘and maybe Dr Mortimer used to have them play with his pego when I was gone, but there was no cause for what they called me, a wanton and a whore, and more besides.’
‘Who?’
‘This man who was staying, first off. Strange fellow, used to watch me working, and ask if I could carry a barrel up the cellar ladder and such like things. Then I’m giving the maids what for one evening, and in he comes, all talk of Hellfire, and this “gross moral turpitude”, and a load of other ten shilling words. Then he’s speaking to my Mum and Dad, private, then not a word spoken, not for weeks, and the next thing I’m off in the van, with my hands tied and all!’
‘That doesn’t seem very fair,’ Thrift admitted, ‘especially as you’re just in trade... no offence, but you do not have my moral obligations.’
‘I’ve learnt that,’ Sally-Anne replied.
‘I’m sorry anyway,’ Thrift went on. ‘It seems a harsh judgement.’
Thrift’s arms were around Sally-Anne’s bulging waist, and she gave a reassuring squeeze. Sally-Anne returned the gesture, and with a sudden stroke of boldness Thrift had shifted her head, to take one of the big nipples into her mouth. Sally-Anne gave a little start and Thrift came off, embarrassed, only to be hugged into Sally-Anne’s chest once again.
‘You do that, if you’ve a mind to,’ Sally-Anne said quietly, ‘and whatever you feel you have to.’
Still intensely embarrassed, but too full of need to stop herself, Thrift began to suckle again, taking the nipple into her mouth and nuzzling her face against the plump pillows of Sally-Anne’s chest. The big girl said nothing, but held on. As she realised she really was to be allowed to do it, Thrift opened her thighs and slid a hand onto her bare quim. As the liquid noises of her masturbation began, Sally-Anne gave her a reassuring squeeze.
As she suckled and masturbated, Thrift’s feelings of comfort and security rose higher and higher, until she had began to shiver with raw emotion. Still Sally-Anne held on, silent and accepting, as Thrift began to let all the pent-up feelings of months flow out, the tears running freely down her face as she fed at Sally-Anne’s breast and rubbed herself. When her orgasm came, it was as if every bad thing that had happened to her was draining away, until she felt safe and strong, despite the box, despite being in Weathercote House.
When she was done she went straight down on Sally-Anne’s quim, without a word being exchanged. Sally-Anne simply spread her thighs and her drawers as Thrift squeezed into position. Thrift licked as well as she was able, cleaning Sally-Anne’s bottom hole and slipping her tongue up into the warm, wet quim before turning her attention higher. After that it took moments to bring Sally-Anne to a shivering, moaning climax. Her task finished, Thrift cuddled up to her friend’s chest once more, in contented silence. After a while Sally-Anne began to stroke Thrift’s hair.
Sally-Anne was released when her day was up, and Thrift allowed out too, but only for a brisk session of exercises, a dozen of the strap from Miss Laird, and to scrub out the inside of the box. The lonely incarceration then began once more, only the awful need to play with herself over what Mr Ormondroyd had done with her was gone. Instead she indulged herself in frequent masturbation over the memory of suckling and licking Sally-Anne, and of playing with the other girls, a pleasure as joyful as it was defiant.
When not playing with herself, or reciting poems and text passages she had learnt in her head, she ran over her two escape attempts, considering where she had gone wrong, and how matters might have been improved. Elizabeth was clearly right that it paid to be unpredictable. It also paid to keep calm, to be as fit as possible, and unencumbered, also immoral. Sally-Anne had been caught only by bad luck, and Kirsty might even have won free. Both had been prepared to suck men’s cocks, or worse, in order to be free. True, the twins had been caught, but they were easy to recognise and tended to be arrogant, believing they could get what they wanted if they fought hard enough. To fight, physically, against impossible odds was foolish.
By the time she was released she had determined to try again. She could endure the box, and the beatings, because for all that they had tried to take her pride away from her, it had not worked. The focus of her pride had changed, that was all, from who she was by birth, with her virtues of innocence, modesty and so forth, to who she was by nature.
She was given a final strapping, twenty-four firm strokes delivered with her tied down across the front desk in the schoolroom, her legs fixed wide to display her bottom and quim to the assembled class. As always she blubbered and howled at the pain, but once she’d been released and turned to face the class so that Miss Habberwick couldn’t see, she managed a tear stained smile. Two desks remained unoccupied, Elizabeth’s and Kirsty’s.
Things had changed, as she discovered by that evening. Miss Scarsdale came into the dormitory to inform them that there were to be no more runs up to King Alfred’s Seat, and that Mr Ormondroyd would be patrolling the land immediately around the grounds every night. A heavy iron grill had been fitted over the dormitory window, making escape impossible. Mrs Budge was gone, leaving Miss Ponderby alone on the night shift.
Once they had been locked in, a rapid exchange of signs was made and Thrift was lifted up on Sally-Anne’s shoulders. The microphone was easy to see, a slim black cylinder set on the upper surface of the beam, but it was impossible to tell how Elizabeth had deactivated it. Thrift tried, using a hair pin to probe the tiny holes Elizabeth had said allowed the mechanism to be controlled, but it was impossible to tell whether or not she had succeeded. In the end she gave up, and the five of them continued to use signs until the light had faded.
Only in the morning did they discover that Thrift had in fact turned the microphone off, when Miss Ponderby came in and had the five of them line up with their bottoms showing. Miss Gant made some adjustments to the microphone while the girls were strapped, three strokes a piece, then told there would be no meat with their lunch that day. Despite dirty looks from the twins, Thrift felt pleased with herself, as she was sure she had worked out how the switch worked.
The daily routine was as ever, but the atmosphere had changed. Save for the stolid Mrs Stokes, all the chaperones were wary and ill-tempered, dishing out strappings for the least offence. By lunchtime Thrift had been made to bend and show four times, and the twins had been sent to Miss Scarsdale, returning naked from the waist down with six neatly laid cane welts across each full, pale bottom. Even Lucy had not escaped.
Despite the beatings, Thrift found herself excited, as were the others. Kirsty and Elizabeth had been gone a week, which meant they had to be we
ll clear of Weathercote House, and presumably at their destinations. The hunt was still on, evidently, with Miss Scarsdale agitated and the telephone in her study ringing repeatedly. Yet still neither missing girl was returned, that day, or the next, until late one afternoon while the girls were exercising on the lawn a police van arrived.
They had brought Kirsty; dressed in a few torn rags, her hands cuffed behind her back, her skin filthy, her flame red hair plastered with mud, but grinning. She was taken straight indoors, and presently the smack of leather on flesh could be heard from the upstairs windows as the girls continued their exercises. Thrift counted a hundred strokes, but Kirsty never so much as cried out.
The next afternoon, exactly twenty-four hours later, Kirsty was sent out to join them on the lawn, now scrubbed clean, but stark naked, with her bottom a mess of welts. Joanna was strapped for attempting to speak to her, but that evening Thrift once more climbed on Sally-Anne’s shoulders to turn the microphone off. Jane then spoke, and the six of them waited in anticipation until the next strike of the clocks, but Miss Ponderby didn’t come. At last Kirsty spoke.
‘So I’m not the last?’
‘No,’ Thrift answered, ‘none of us know what has become of Elizabeth. She has not yet been brought back, and nor do I imagine she will be.’
‘Ay, she’s canny that one,’ Kirsty admitted, ‘and good luck to her. I’d not be here myself but for bad luck.’
‘What happened?’ Joanna demanded.
‘I got to Kendal easy enough,’ Kirsty answered, ‘and I figured they’d be waiting for me in Glasgow, so I worked a few days before going north. I’d likely be in Kendal now, only the fat old Madam I was with tried to dob me in for a reward.’
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