Chapter 6
Hester Hadley stared with disbelief at her golden-haired stepsister. "You mean poor Janet is actually going to be punished in front of strangers?" she gasped.
"Oh, for goodness sake, Hes," Betty expostulated. "Who say we're strangers? Janet and I have been pals for a long time, and I'm even closer to Connie."
"I know," Hester protested, "but it's shocking! I never heard of such a thing, a parent actually wanting somebody else to watch her daughter get sp-spanked. I don't want to go!"
"Mother would like you to, though," was Betty's insinuating reply, "and so would your Dad."
"How do you know what my father wants me to do, Betty?" Hester indignantly flashed.
"Maybe," Betty said coolly, "I better tell Mom the way you feel. She might want to say something to you."
"Oh, if you're going to make a federal case out of it, I'll go," Hester peevishly exclaimed. "But that doesn't mean I agree with Mrs. Gilmore's methods. Why, Janet is as old as I am, and it's absolutely terrible to punish her that humiliating way!"
"I know how you feel, Hes," the lovely golden-haired teenager patiently countered, "but just the same, you better keep your opinions to yourself when you're in Mrs. Gilmore's house. Come on, it's nearly five o'clock. I told you that Mom asked me to say she'd like to have you go with me. And I'll tell you something else, Janet doesn't mind at all."
"She doesn't?" Hester echoed. She couldn't understand the motivation of all these girls Betty seemed to know so well. Why, if she were going to be punished in this ridiculous and humiliating and painful way, having anyone else know about it would be the last thing in the world she'd want.
"Of course, you silly," Betty was talking to her stepsister as if the latter were her own age instead of two years older. "Janet says it helps take her mind off things. She feels she's among friends and it makes it easier for her to stand her spanking. Hurry up now!"
It was pretty, milky skinned, brown-haired Connie Gilmore who opened the door to Betty's ring and ushered them silently out of the living room and down the hall and up the stairs to Janet's bedroom.
Tony was out biking with some of his cronies from school, with the strict admonition not to come back until about six o'clock in time to wash up for supper. Mr. Gilmore had suddenly gone out of town again and wouldn't be back until the following Thursday evening. So there was hardly any final court of appeal for poor Janet except her mother, and her mother had already acted as jury and judge and was now about to assume the role of executioner.
Connie glanced at her wristwatch. "Mother is just about ready to start," she whispered. "I guess Janet has been doing a lot of thinking in the doghouse. I sneaked out there a little while ago and I asked her how she felt, and Janet said it was something fierce to be in there all by herself thinking about what was going to happen at five o'clock, and she was sorry she had been so uppity to Mom and Dad."
"Doghouse?" Hester stared at the pretty brunette uncomprehendingly.
"Tell her, Connie," Betty said laconically as they walked up the stairs towards Janet's bedroom.
"Well," Connie hastily explained to the astounded auburn-haired daughter of Arthur Hadley, "whenever anyone of us is really awfully naughty, like talking back or making a scene of showing temper, we're put in the doghouse. It's a big packing crate cut out like a real doghouse, and when you go in there, you think about how wrong you've been and how you're going to be punished for it. None of us like it."
"I shouldn't think so!" Hester gasped, glancing at Betty with widened eyes. But her stepsister put a finger to her lips to caution Hester against any such outspoken criticisms of Louise Gilmore's procedural methods, and then Connie knocked gently at the closed door of the bedroom and was told by her mother to "Come in, girls!"
Connie opened the door and stood back to let Betty and Hester enter. The latter caught her breath and put her hand to her gaping mouth at the scene before her. Betty, swiftly realizing that Hester was overcome with dismayed surprise, grasped her firmly by the elbow and steered her over to a row of chairs which was placed at the wall opposite the bed and made her sit down, herself taking a place next to Hester, while Connie quietly slipped into the third chair.
The pretty eighteen-year-old brunette was stretched out on her bed, her pillow under her stomach, and her slim ankles were corded to the posts at the foot of the bed, while her wrists were similarly bound to the headposts. She was stark naked, and over her head was a kind of black hood into which slits had been cut for the eyes, mouth and nose. Hester could not take her eyes off the prostrate, straddled naked body of Janet Gilmore. And what she noticed first of all was Janet's bottom, the skin of which was a warm, flawlessly smooth olive tint. It was pear-shapted, and the cheeks were exceptionally plump and set rather tightly together, the shadowy crease between them broadening just at the base of the buttocks. Janet's thighs were delightfully curvaceous, and her calves were slim and sinuously set, the muscles already fluidly in play to denote her nervous anticipation of what was to ensue.
Louise Gilmore, in a black cotton dress, looked quite severe, and her face was grave. In her right hand, she held the little rubber dog whip which had become the primary instrument of chastisement in the household, when correction of a serious nature was in order.
"Very well," she said in a calm voice, "I think we are ready to begin. Janet, you understand that this session will clear your ledger, and that you have a total of one hundred and fifty black marks on it to this moment."
"Y-yes, M-Mother," Janet's voice was muffled, and she seemed to keep her face down against the sheets. The skin of her bottom twitched spasmodically, and then a long shiver ran up and down her straddled thighs. Hester could not take her eyes off the naked girl, and Betty surreptitiously entwined her fingers with Hester's and squeezed them significantly, intimating to her stepsister that she mustn't speak. For that matter, Hester couldn't have uttered a sound if she had wanted to; she had never before in all her life imagined that such a spectacle could take place, much less in the presence of witnesses. And the sight of that little black whip dangling from Louise Gil-, more's hand made her positively ill. It was unthinkable that a girl as grownup as Janet should actually resign herself to being beaten with it, and, worst of all, to allow an audience like this!
"Very well, dear. One hundred fifty spanks, then. Since we have always agreed that the demerits in the ledger must be wiped out no later than ten days after the entry of the first portion of these marks, you unfortunately are going to be expected to stand the entire amount here and now. Is that understood, Janet?"
"Y-yes, M-Mother," again Janet's voice was the solid, rather heavy gloves relaxed with a vivid muffled and faint. But this time the muscles of her little shiver that spoke eloquent volumes on the lovely naked brunette's summoning up of all her bare bottom seemed to contract, and then again courage before the imminent ordeal.
"To make matters easier for you, Janet," her your punishment into five periods of thirty spanks each, with a pause between each set of thirty to give you time to rest a little."
"T-thank you, M-Mother." Once again, Janet's voice was faint and tremulous.
Louise Gilmore placed herself at the left edge of the bed, slowly raised her right arm and then brought down the little black rubber dog whip with a hissing onrush through the air as it clung over the tops of Janet's bulky olivesheened hips. Hester Hadley uttered a stifled gasp, which Betty reproved by digging her fingernails into Hester's wrist. Under the first cut, Janet's naked bottom stiffened, and Hester could see the brunette's bare toes twist and curl, but no sound was heard. She marveled at the victim's composure and stoicism. The whip was short and made of rubber, extremely flexible and pliant, but nevertheless in Hester's untutored eyes it looked like the most ferocious implement devised by the torturers of the Holy Inquisition for the martyrdom of helpless females. Her eyes were huge and hypnotically fixed on the straddled, masked, naked young sufferer tethered to the bed.
A second blow now followed, a little lower down, leaping across both upper bottomglobes.
Again Janet's gluteal muscles contracted and then relaxed, making her bare bottom quake in the most provocative manner, and Hester believed that she could hear a faint indrawn breath from the victim. Only two lashes and already the finely grained olive-warm bare skin of Janet's upper hip slopes bore two vivid pink strips. The total of a hundred fifty spanks summarily announced by Janet's mother seemed to Hester to be an intolerable martyrdom, medieval in its cruelty. But try as she would, she could not wrest her gaze away from the condemned bottom, and to her own embarrassment, she found herself comparing Janet's naked seat with her younger stepsister's plump round nether globes.
The third cut fell after about ten seconds, pursuing the descending pathway in horizontal pattern, inflicting a third stripe which made three neatly parallel lines standing out on the warm olive epidermis of Janet's naked behind. Once again, the brunette managed to suppress any outcry, but her fingers convulsively clutched the sheets and she lifted her head slightly, staring through the slits of her black cloth mask at the mahogany headboard of her bed. Connie Gilmore sat back, her hands demurely folded in her lap, a sympathetic look on her pretty face, as she followed her older sister's ordeal, doubtless reflecting to herself how fortunate she was in not being in Janet's place. Oddly enough, Mrs. Gilmore had imposed the matter of keeping a ledger of demerits only on Janet and not on Connie or Tony, who were most usually punished shortly after any single commission of a misdemeanor. This alteration of the Gilmore regimen was, obviously, intended to emphasize to the oldest of the Gilmore offspring that the age of eighteen did not immunize her from corporal chastisement and let her at the same time observe with what impartial and severely just authority her mother acted in the role of supervisory guardian.
The fourth and now the fifth lashes of the little black rubber dog whip fell with hardly a space between them, yet each continued the deliberately methodical pattern of horizontal stripes in a downward path over both upreared, tightly stretched bare bottom cheeks. Janet's first audible gasp was heard after the fifth, and her hindquarters seemed to clench protectively, and then to relax, so that for an instant Hester Hadley could espy the ambery furrow which bisected those resilient, spaciously broad bottomovals.
Louise Gilmore paused a moment now, studying the thin bright pink weals thus far imprinted on her daughter's bare buttocks. During this interlude, Janet nervously shifted herself over the pillow, tentatively trying the extent of tension on her bound wrists and ankles to avoid chafing her delicate limbs in useless jerking, as she anticipated the growing severity and pain of her punishment. Now once again the little whip rose slowly in the air, hovering over the condemned naked behind like a Damoclean sword. Then it flashed down, bridging both buttocks a few inches above the ripest curves, and Janet's bare hips executed a flurried weaving from side to side, a licentious maneuver which suggested that she was beginning to seek distraction from the stinging kisses of the little whip by frictioning her soft femininity against the pillow which pressed so tightly against that most intimate niche.
The next four cuts were given almost together, expertly placed by the silver-blonde dominatress so that the very last-the tenth spank in all of Janet's lengthy punishmentbit home over the exact center of those ripened summits. Again Hester could hear Janet suck in her breath rather loudly, an this time the brunette turned her masked face back to her left as if to look at her beautiful, stern executioner.
All this seemed to have taken a century, though actually it had taken not more than two or three minutes; it appeared to Hester that it would take hours before the terrifyingly barbaric total of a hundred and fifty strokes from that cruel little whip could be meted out. And in what condition, Hester asked herself, would poor Janet's bottom be then? Why, her flesh was sure to be scarred and bleeding. Oh it was monstrous, incredible in this day and age!
Already beads of sweat gleamed on Hester's forehead, and her breath came more and more quickly, while her bosom rose and fell under the prey of a singlar emotion which she mistook for horrified fascination and incredulity, but which, unbeknownst to herself, was actually her first naive reaction to voluptuous domestic correction.
Once again Louise Gilmore paused, moved slightly to the left, and then again her right arm rose to poise the little whip in the air over the twitching bottom of her errant daughter. It descended with a whistling hiss that made Hester's blood run cold, and the black thong clung tenaciously across both huddling olivetinted bottomcheeks about a quarter of an inch below the mark left by the tenth spank. Janet's hips seemed to jerk under the burning sting of the little whip, and again she lifted her masked face, but still not a word of supplication emerged.
By the time the twentieth spank had been inflicted, Louise Gilmore had entirely covered the area between the tops of Janet's hips and the succulent, upswelling base of the spacious, solid and meaty bottomovals. Janet's toes were twisting and curling ceaselessly now, while her fingers had begun to dig into her moist soft palms. She shifted herself lightly over the pillow, testing the maximum play of the bonds which fixed round her slim ankles, and seeking a more comfortable pose with her left cheek pressed down against the sheets, awaited the resumption of her punishment.
Hester Hadley sat there trembling, the presence of Connie and Betty virtually forgotten. The world seemed to revolve around her and that olive-sheened naked pinioned body there beyond her on the bed, and the svelte, tall imperatrix from whose right hand the sinister little implement of fustigation dangled.
The next series of ten lashes, again horizontally inflicted, seemed to be directed with the aim of "touching up" those areas of bare skin between the tops of the girl's hips and her thighs which had not been visited by the wicked little lash. Despite herself, Hester had to marvel at the dexterity and accuracy of Louise Gilmore's aim in planting the little black rubber thong across both quivering hillocks and deepening the overall decor of bright pink stripes which, by the time her arm descended for the thirtieth time, appeared now to leave not an inch of skin untouched on that plump, upjutting bare bottom.
Janet had begun to gasp aloud, wordless interjections of "Ohh!" and "Ahhh!" towards the last five strokes, while again her masked face turned rather quickly over her left shoulder toward the lovely silver-blonde executioner. Now Louise Gilmore walked slowly around the foot of the bed to take her stance on the right side, a procedure intended to "equalize" the sting of the whipping. From this vantage point, the end of the black rubber thong would nip the tender flesh along the outer sector of Janet's left bottomglobe, whereas previously the edge of the other cheek had received the force of that biting impact.
Then she spoke: "You may have a minute, Janet, to compose yourself before I begin the next series.
At once, the masked brunette uttered a long tremulous sigh, and seemed to adjust herself as best she could in the relative liberty granted her by the cords fixing around her slim wrists and ankles. She squirmed her loins feverishly over the pillow-almost, to Hester's blushing consternation, as if she were trying to distract herself from the fiery heat of her already well-whipped bottom by masturbating herself through this self-applied friction!-lifted her head and turned her masked face to this side and then to that, flexed her slim fingers as well as her dainty bare toes, and then exhaled another sigh as she stammered somewhat huskily, "I-I'm ready, M-Mother. I'm awfully sorry, really I am."
"So am I, dear," Louise Gilmore gravely remarked as she lifted up the little whip, her eyes contemplating the quivering, broad ovals of her daughter's plump, pillow-uplifted naked bottom.
Hester wanted to cry out, to rise from her chair, to rush to Janet and intercede for the courageous young beauty, but her tongue was seemingly paralyzed against the roof of her mouth and she felt herself rooted to her chair. She could only watch in a mounting stupefaction as the silver-blonde dominatress suddenly brought down the wicked-looking little black rubber thong with a crisp impact across the tops of Janet's left hip. And this time it appeared to Hester that Louise Gilmore was inflicting the spanking to just one buttock instead of both of them as hitherto.
At once she perceived an alteration of Janet's stoicism which had till this moment taxed her powers of credulity, for she had found herself telling herself that if this were happening to her, she would be shrieking out in pain at every stroke and jerking madly at her bonds to break free. However, as just the tip of the thong seemed to dart down and smartly kiss the outer edge at the top of Janet's left hip, the masked brunette convulsively started, lifted her head and emitted a sobbing: "Aaaah, oh, Mother, Mother, I won't do it again!"
The muscles in Janet's bare calves flexed violently, till the smooth olive skin of those lovely contours seemed to be especially taut.
Hester could see the lovely, rather plumpish thighs shivering from kneehollow up to the base of that vividly striped bottom, and she found herself unconsciously entwining her fingers with Betty's, as if to take thereby some fulcrum of sanity against the inhuman torture she was witnessing.
Deliberately Louise Gilmore continued the fustigation. The thirty-first through fortieth lashes bit home with the very end of the whip stinging the outer edge of the left buttock, and progressing from the top of the hip down to the base, exactly in the pattern of the previous thirty strokes. They really stung, if Janet's almost instantaneous reactions were to be credenced; at each stinging little thud of the rubber thong on bare girl flesh, Janet's hips would jerk towards the right, the globes of her inflamed bottom violently contracting and then relaxing, and twice her bottom seemed to leave the pillow and arch up under the impetus of the little whip's fiery kiss. Also, in a low sobbing voice, she began to call out. though in a very restrained way: "Oohhh Ouch, Oh Mother!-Ooooh, I'm sorry, I'll be good from now on, ouch, ooooh!"
The next ten lashes visited the inner edge of the right buttock very near the crease, and again with just the tip of the black rubber thong. This was an exquisitely sensitive area, again judging from Janet's frantic squirmings and twistings over the pillow, and Hester observed that the victim now began to turn her masked face back to her relentless executioner with almost each of those ten cuts.
By now, Janet had had exactly one third of her count, which is to say fifty strokes out of the hundred and fifty to which she had been condemned by the no-longer-postponable demerit total in her ledger book. Louise Gilmore allowed her daughter an extra moment of reprieve by leaning down to study the furiously inflamed skin of both twitching bottomglobes, and then proceeded to Hester's aghast surprise, to inflict the last ten strokes of this second series of thirty entirely to Janet's left thigh and progressively descending from the base of her bottomcheek to the dimpled, delicately veined hollow of her soft knee. This change of target seemed to distress the pretty, naked masked brunette more than the preceding fifty lashes had done, if one were to judge by her spasmodic wrigglings, and her attempt at clenching her thighs tightly shut, which of course could not be done because the cords of her ankles yawned her pretty bare legs practically a yard apart. Also, she now loudly announced her discomfort that was more high pitched than at any time previously: "Aiii! Ohh, Mother, please! Owww! I'll be good, Mother! I won't do it again, Mother! Ouch, Ohh dear, Ohhh!"
Once again Louise Gilmore paused and then slowly went round to the other side of the bed and calmly observed, "Take a minute's break, Janet." And once again the naked brunette shunted herself uneasily across the pillow, twisted her toes and fingers, moved her face from side to side, trying apparently to find some more comfortable resting place for her cheek in which to give herself the maximum degree of self-control in enduring resumption of her punishment.
When the minute was up, Louise Gilmore resumed the spanking with ten slowly spaced cuts across the other thigh, applying the first just below the base of the upswelling plump bottomoval and then laying neat bright pink parallel lines down the hollow of the knee. Janet squealed and sobbed, frantically twisting her masked face towards her mother, her hands opened and closed into desperate little fists, but she did not fight her bonds. At the conclusion of this series of ten lashes, she lay quivering restlessly over the pillow, and her loins seemed to grind spasmodically back and forth with an irregular rhythm which, to Hester, appeared to be scandalously obscene.
Still remaining on the left side of the bed and standing close to the quivering naked girl, Louise Gilmore continued Janet's spanking with ten vertical cuts this time, each of which smacked noisily down on the brunette's plump left buttock. Beginning with the outer edge of the globe, the silver-blonde imperatrix brought the whip down quickly, with about three seconds between cuts, till she had reached the sinuously distended crease between the girl's bare nether globes. These new pink stripes crisscrossed with the already paling marks, but they apparently caused Janet acute distress, for her sobs and tears redoubled in intensity, and now for the first time she began to jerk her wrists against the soft felt cords wound round them and connecting to the posts at the head of the bed. After another slight pause, Louise Gilmore walked round to the girl's right side and inflicted ten exactly vertical cuts over the other buttock, again from the outer edge of the globe in towards the ambery intimate groove which separated the luscious, meaty hillocks of Janet Gilmore's posterior. These too drew poignant sobs and little tearful wails of "Aaaaah, Mother! Ohh, don't, oh please no more! Oh, I'll be good, so good! I didn't mean to be rude, I truly didn't, Mother! Eeeowww!" And her naked young body squirmed and jerked fitfully at almost every cut, Hester horrifiedly observed.
Janet had now received ninety spanks, or three fifths of her total punishment. Louise Gilmore allowed her daughter a two-minute pause this time, and laid the whip down on the edge of the bed while she slowly smoothed her dress with both hands, flexing her fingers as if gathering new strength for the completion of her daughter's chastisement. Hester's temples were throbbing as with fever, and she stared at Louise Gilmore as if at any moment she wanted to get up and plead with the woman to stop whipping that poor tortured girl. Janet's bottom was violently inflamed now, and the bright pink streaks with their imprinted horizontal marks over both straddled thighs offered a lasciviously contrasting pattern to the crisscross design imposed over her naked buttocks. Hester asked herself how it was possible for that poor girl to endure sixty more of those dreadful spanks with that cruel little whip and where there would be room to hit that darkened, throbbing plump flesh on which the olive warmth and smoothness had long since vanished.
Glancing at her wristwatch, Louise Gilmore called out, "Time, Janet!" With a sobbing gasp, the naked brunette stiffened herself and turned her face so as to press her left cheek down against the rumpled sheets. Her hands clenched into brave little fists, her squirming toes dug down into the sheets, and all her body seemed to-stiffen. But she could-not control the sporadic twitching of the angrily reddened skin of her behind nor of the welted thigh columns, a sure sign of her enervation.
Hester wanted to look away, to close her eyes, but she could not. It was as if she were riveted to her chair and invisible fingers were drawing up her eyelids so that she could not close them. As in an incredible nightmare that was all too real, she watched Louise Gilmore pick up the whip, step back towards the end of the bed and, measuring her distance with practiced eye, apply a diagonal cut which sent the tip of the black rubber thong flicking down against the outer edge of Janet's right buttock and drew the lash itself down across the plump, upswelling globe to the inner edge of the base of the cheek.
"Oww OOhhhh! Oh please, Mother, it's awful! I'll never be naughty again, I promise I won't! I didn't mean to be rude to you and Dad!" Janet wailed, her composure deserting her for the first time. Her face quickly turned round over her left shoulder, and her body jerked and squirmed with uncontrollable gyrations of her violently striped hips. Again her wrists jerked at the felt cords, and her head rose, as her mother continued to apply this set of ten spanks all in diagonal strokes encompassing that single buttock. After having inflicted these, Louise Gilmore moved to the other side of the bed and applied ten more to the other buttock, in the same diagonal design, and each of these was announced with a piercing squeal and a sobbing plea: "Eeeeyarhhh!! Ohh, please not so hard, Mother dear! Ahrrhh!
Oooooh, I'll be awfully good, oh please let up, Mother! Owwwouuuu!!! I'll never do it again, Mother!"
Louise Gilmore paused about thirty seconds after this second set of ten, and then concluded the fourth series of thirty spanks by directing ten quick cuts of the little whip, all horizonally lodged between the lower summits and the base of her daughters violently discolored naked behind. Janet's hips tossed and twisted and jerked, her loins twisting the pillow and sometimes Hester could see for an infinitesimal moment a glimpse of the black curly pubis which fleeced the girl's virgin mount. The meaty bottomovals sporadically huddled, clenched and yawned, and Janet's head lifted at each cut as her cries and plaintive assurances of good behavior in the future became more and more harrowing and flurried, attesting to the unmistakable fact that she was rapidly losing what little remained of her sorely tried endurance.
"Two minutes again, Janet, and then for your final dose," the silver-blonde disciplinarian announced.
Those two minutes seemed to tick by like eternities for the spellbound, horrified Hester Hadley. That poor bottom, those lovely tortured thighs! That inflamed, twitching flesh which never seemed to be able to relax now, and the shaking shoulders as Janet muffled her sobs by pressing her mouth against the moist, rumpled sheets of her bed. And how those little fingers piteously opened and closed, the firm little fists clenching, then opening as Janet's fingers clawed the air as if trying to exorcise the burning demons who had invaded her opulent young bottom!
"Time, Janet, get ready," Louise Gilmore now calmly decreed as she again picked up the whip from the edge of the bed on which she had laid it. Hester could feel Betty's fingers squeeze hers convulsively, and with a covert glance at her golden-haired youngter stepsister, Arthur's daughter noticed that Betty's blue eyes were humid and wide and shining and as hypnotically fixed on that vividly streaked and up-arched condemned bottom as were her own.
Louise Gilmore herself seemed to take pity on the seriously inflamed condition of her daughter's seat, so she proceeded to inflict the last thirty spanks with a merciful swiftness. Nonetheless, it was a severe ordeal for poor Janet; twenty of the lashes were directed over the girl's straddled naked thighs, ten to each column from knee-hollow to the base of the shuddering welted globe, and then the final ten cuts were laid on with what seemed exemplary vigor right over the plumpest curves of Janet's naked, tossing, jerking bottom. These last ten drew a shriek each time the little whip fell with an angry crack, and again Janet's hips lunged wildly, sometimes arching up in the air and once again revealing to Hester's shocked gaze the telltale triangle of black pussy curls which proclaimed the hiding place of Janet's tender young cunt.
"There, my dear," Louise Gilmore said as she moved back to the dresser drawers and, opening the top one, put the little whip away. "Your ledger is clean now, and I hope for your sake, Janet, that you'll think very seriously over the lesson you've learned this afternoon and not get yourself in trouble for quite a long time to come. I should think that another spanking even as late as the end of next week would be quite painful for you, young lady."
And with this, she left the bedroom. No sooner had she done so than Connie hurried up from her chair and ran into the bathroom, coming out a moment later with a couple of wet towels which she had wrung out and which she at once placed over Janet's naked behind and legs. The moaning sigh of relief which the older girl gave made Hester gasp as she realized how poor Janet must be suffering. Then Connie proceeded carefully to untie the felt cords around her sister's ankles, leaving the girl's wrists till the last. Seating herself on the edge of the bed, she stroked Janet's head and murmured, "Gosh, honey, it must have hurt awfully, but I'll get you lots more cold towels. Shall I put some cold cream on it later?"
"Oh yes, would you please, Connie?" Janet groaned. "Oh, Lordy, I won't pile up that many demerits again, I can tell you that! I feel as if I sat down upon a hot stove-ooooh, it hurts so! And on my legs it was worst of all, it always is! Ohh, just let me lie here awhile, Connie, I'm so weak!"
Betty whispered into Hester's ear, "Come on, Hes, time to go home. And don't feel too sorry for Janet. I know her only too well. In a couple of days, she'll be bouncing around the tennis court as if nothing had happened. She's got a really tough heinie, even if this was a specially hard whipping. But she'd be the first to tell you that she deserved it and she's just as glad it's all over and done with so that she can start with a fresh slate. Let's go home, Hes."
And, her legs weak, her face scarlet with confusion, Hester Hadley left Janet Gilmore's bedroom without a word, while Connie and her thrashed older sister consoled each other in the way sisters have from time immemorial. And thus another significent milestone in Hester Hadley's life had been reached!