Chapter 10

During the two weeks of her father's Mexican honeymoon with Betty's beautiful and mature mother, Hester Hadley found herself introduced to the golden-haired teenager's circle of young friends. She was not especially crazy about them, because all of them, with the exception of Janet Gilmore, were younger than herself. However, and again with a condescending air of one who is performing a disagreeable task solely as a necessity, she tried to be as cordial as possible to them all.

Jennie, Eleanor's jovial housekeeper, had already made her mind up about Hester the very first day they met when Hester had come into the kitchen to ask that some milk and sandwiches be served to her in her room. The portly Negress put her hands on her hips after Arthur's daughter had left the kitchen, shook her head and exclaimed, "My lands! Dat dere young gal gonna find out Miz' Eleanor ain't gonna stand sass nohow soon as she done come back from de honeymoon! Serve it up in her room, she says! Huh! I shonuff wonder what Miz' Eleanor would say if Betty came in and asked for service like that, I sho' does!"

Nevertheless, deciding that it was not her place to educate Hester as to the regimen practised in the Stanfield home, Jennie made the sandwiches and poured out a glass of milk and brought them up to the diffident auburnhaired teenager, who gave her a cool nod and accepted the service as if it was her due without so much as a "Thank you, Jennie." And this further lack of good manners made the Negress a much more staunch ally of Betty than ever before. She, of course, was fully aware that the golden-haired teenager was punished when she displeased her mother. Often, indeed Jennie had watched Betty being spanked right there in the kitchen. As a matter of fact only a week before Eleanor and Betty had gone to Malibu on the vacation that was to turn into romance for the mature brownette widow, Betty had forgotten to ask her mother's permission to have lunch with Sally Jamison and spend the afternoon playing with her. When she came back about four-thirty, Eleanor rebuked her daughter and irritatedly informed her that she had asked Jennie for Betty's whereabouts and had been unable to learn anything at all. Sentence was immediately pronounced and executed.

Much to her dismay and humiliation, Betty was obliged to hold up her skirt and nylon petticoat, and go across her mother's lap on a kitchen chair in full view of Jennie. Thereupon Eleanor requested a three-thonged leather martinet from the Negress, who got it from its hook in the pantry and presented it to her employer. Eleanor had acquired this martinet only a few months previously; today was the first time that Betty had been introduced to it and it was an experience the golden-haired teenager would gratefully have done without.

Calmly and dispassionately, Eleanor had applied forty stinging lashes, and with an admirable dexterity had applied about half of the strokes in such a way that the tapering brown leather thongs cracked sonorously over Betty's upturned pink sheened round bottomcheeks, while the other half she inflicted so that the tips of the thongs nipped the inflamed and squirming posterior. Betty's shame was intensified because, her panties slipped down around her knees, she couldn't help trying to kick and twist and wriggle under this highly unpleasant and painfully diversified chastisement, maneuvers which exposed to Jennie's eyes the most intimate parts of the young girl's virginal anatomy. After the punishment had been inflicted, there was the usual ceremonial of making up, and this Betty liked most of all when she had to be punished. Without being allowed to pull up her panties, she could sit on her mother's lap, cuddling her arms around Eleanor's neck, while Eleanor gently chided her for her naughtiness and made her promise not to repeat the offense. Then followed the kiss of peace, after which Betty was permitted to pull her panties up and lower her outer garments and then put the martinet back in place in the pantry.

During this period of the honeymoon, Betty remembered her mother's instructions on indoctrinating Hester into the mysteries and meaning of corporal punishment. She wasn't quite sure how to begin the topic, but as matters turned out, Hester herself unwittingly led the way by asking casually, as they were enroute to Frieda Jamison's house, "I hope you're feeling better, Betty, after that sick spell you had."

Mystified, the lovely golden-haired teenager regarded her new stepsister: "Sick spell? Whatever in the world are you talking about, Hester?"

"I mean that evening you were supposed to have dinner with your mother and my Dad and you didn't show up."

"Oh, that," Betty said flippantly. "I wasn't exactly sick. I just had to stay in my room, that's all."

"But why?" Hester pursued.

"Because Mother punished me, that's all. She had my supper sent up from the restaurant, though, so I didn't exactly starve."

"Punished you?" Hester echoed with growing curiosity. "But how and for what, Betty?"

"I just did something mother didn't like," the good-natured teenager casually replied, "so she sent me up to my room and then in a little while she came and gave me a spanking."

"You must be joking!" Hester's jaw dropped. "Nobody spanks girls your age anymore."

"Try telling that to Mother, and see how far you'd get," Betty merrily laughed. "But don't look so worried, Hester. I'm not, I can assure you."

"You mean--Betty, tell me the truth! You mean she really did spank you?" Hester gasped.

Betty nodded so that her golden curls danced in the air, and then giggled: "My gracious, Hester, from the way you talk, you'd think it was the end of the world! Lots of kids get spanked in Claremont. Fact is, all the kids I pal around with do, even the fellows."

"I can't believe it. You reason with a child, you don't use physical force," Hester declared. "And you're sixteen, and these other friends of yours are about that age, aren't they?"

"Yes, except Janet, she's eighteen, and Sally Jamison is seventeen, and so is Barbara Carruthers. But they get spanked just the way I do. Oh, I guess it's a little different, because every parent has their own way of doing it. But when we're naughty we can expect it I'll tell you that much, Hester."

"I never heard of such a dreadful thing!" Arthur Hadley's precocious, selfish daughter gasped, her cheeks coloring vividly. "Why, it's downright cruelty, that's what it is! Parents who beat their children--why, they ought to be in jail."

"Say, Hester, you sure get some goofy ideas," Betty shook her head reprovingly. "And you just better not talk like that when we're over in Mrs. Jamison's house. There isn't a kid I know who gets spanked who doesn't think the world of their father and mother, and that's no lie, Hester. Mother started spanking me when I was about ten, just after Daddy died. I can see now that I was a real problem to her. And if it hadn't been for those spankings and her constant showing me what I was doing wrong, I don't know how I would have turned out. I've still got a long way to go, but I never feel mad at Mother when she does have to spank me, because there's always a good reason for it, and she tells me so before she punishes me."

"Just the same, Betty, it sounds so cold and brutal," Hester exclaimed shaking her head incredulously. "It just doesn't seem possible, when a girl is your age, or like your friend Sally Jamison, to actually treat her like a little child-- it's terrible!"

"Now you listen here, Hester," Betty firmly avowed as she turned to face her friend just before they mounted the steps of the Jamison porch. "Until a kid is old enough to get married and to go out and earn her own living or get married, she still is a child in lots of ways. I know Mother has shown me that I am. All the girls I know feel that way. But I tell you, Hester, they don't resent it at all."

"They must be just sheep then," Hester sniffed.

"Well, I like that. I suppose you think I'm one too because I let Mother spank me!" Betty heatedly countered.

"I don't know what to think at this point," Hester confessed. "I just never dreamed that modern parents still did that. It's old-fashioned, and it's so, well, cruel, that's the only word I can think of for it. Does your mother--I mean, when she punishes you, does she spank you with her hand, Betty?"

"Not usually," the pert golden-haired youngster giggled. "I sometimes wish she would, because I can tell you that a strap and a hairbrush hurt a lot worse than just the hand."

"A strap? She beats you with a strap, Betty?" Hester was pale and wide-eyed now.

"Say, why do you have to keep repeating everything I say, Hester?" Betty wanted to know. That's what I said, a strap or a hairbrush. On the bare skin too, if you want to know something. And when it's over, sure, I'm crying and my heinie stings like anything, but then it's all over and I'm forgiven for having been naughty, and Mother takes me on her lap and I promise her I'll be a good girl, and we kiss and make up and everything is nice. And it's not just because we kiss and make up that I say that, either," she added loyally. "Mother does lots of wonderful things for me, gives me lots of unexpected treats and rewards when I'm good, without my going out of the way to earn them. So you see, it's not brutal or cruel at all, and I do hope you won't use words like that in front of my friends. They'd just laugh at you."

"Just the same, I think I'd die if anyone ever did that to me," Hester gasped, her cheeks coloring violently at the mere thought.

But the ice had been broken and now this mysterious subject had entered the precocious mind of Arthur Hadley's only child, at an age when, as his beautiful new bride had already agreed, it was almost too late to begin to make amends for Hester's earlier undisciplined upbringing.

However, the first seeds of awareness that life was not all untrammeled selfishness had just been sown in Hester's keenly impressionable mind, and a sprouting at the harvest to be derived from that would, as we shall see, achieve a most dramatic and exciting gleaning!

"Now I'm going to introduce you to Sally Jamison, who is my best friend next to Connie Gilmore," the goldenhaired teenager told her older stepsister. "And please, for gosh sakes, Hester, don't embarrass me by saying what you just did about parents who spank, because Sally happens to love her mother and father an awful lot. And yet she sometimes gets it a lot worse than I ever do from Mother." With this admonition, Betty rang the doorbell of the Jamison house, and a moment later, sandyhaired ripe-contoured Sally herself answered. She had a pretty rounded face, with an adorable dimple in each cheek and in the middle of her chin, with gray-blue eyes, a demure, straight little nose with rather pronouncedly flaring wings, and full, firm, generous mouth. She was about the same height as Betty, but, a year older, even more ripely developed, her breasts being highperched and closely spaced, surprisingly large for so young a girl. From her slim waist, there flared surprisingly ample hips, but her thighs and calves were beautifully proportioned by contrast. Her bottom was solid, the cheeks round and jouncy, and very tightly spaced. Her skin was freckled and milky, and she had a soft flurried voice and was evidently, of a highly excitable temperament, and very devotedly a friend of Betty's.

Mrs. Jamison herself came into the living room to welcome the two Hadley girls and to be introduced to Hester. Frieda Jamison at thirty-nine, wore her black hair closely cropped, almost in a mannish do. She was about five feet six and a half inches in height, slim and elegant of build and features. Her pleasant twinkling, widely spaced darkbrown eyes and her Roman nose and small firm mouth, as well as her high-set cheekbones gave her an air of sophistication. Her voice was cool, and a rich contralto, and she and her illustrator husband Hank had traveled a good deal at the outset of their marriage so that she spoke French fluently. She did not quite have the severity of Louise Gilmore, but from the way in which Sally quieted down as soon as she came into the room, it was evident that she possessed a good deal of authority over the family, which included twelve-year-old Bob and fourteen-year-old Nancy.

"Remember, Sally, I'd like you to go to the store for me before it closes," she remarked as she was turning to leave the living room. "That should give you girls about an hour to chat. I'll bring in some cookies and milk for all of you."

"Thanks, Mother," Sally called, "I won't forget. Do you have a list of what you want?"

"It's on the kitchen table, and the money's in a little coin-purse."

"Fine, Mother, I'll do it. And thanks a lot for the snack!"

"Not too many cookies for you, Sally," her mother smilingly retorted, "you're planning to lose enough pounds so your father can buy you that pretty skirt and suit combination you've had your eye on for the opening of school."

"I know, Mother. Isn't it awful?" Sally turned to Hester and Betty with a mock-tragic expression in her lovely eyes. "I do so love Mom's pies and cakes and stuff, but the minute I start eating, I just can't seem to shed any weight."

At this point, Frieda Jamison went down the hall and Betty now teasingly giggled, "The worst of it is, Sally, that the more weight you put on, it goes all to your heinie, and that makes lots more for your mother to spank when you're naughty!"

"Oh, you!" Sally blushed and laughed.

"Well, here's my new sister," Betty told her as the three of them made themselves comfortable in the living-room couch." She'll be going to college the end of next month. You and I will be going back to Claremont High. 'Course, you'll be a senior ahead of me."

"Sure, I'm a year older than you are, so why not?" Sally laughed.

"Well, how are things going this summer? Did you have your vacation yet? We went to Malibu, you know," Betty boasted.

"Daddy took his the first weeks in July. He had to, because all the work for fall and winter is piling up around now, and that was the only time he could really get away. We went to Lake Arrowhead, you know. It was peachy!"

"Gee, I'll bet it was. How's Nancy and Bob?"

"About the same. Nancy is over playing with Verna, and Bob and Tony are working on a model plane together. Bob's real smart about mechanical things, and Daddy thinks he's really going to be happy with that new woodshop course they're having in grade school next term," Sally Jamison proudly reported.

"That's great!" Betty beamed. "And your kid sister Nancy, is she keeping out of mischief?"

Sally shrugged, her luscious breasts jiggling against her cotton dress through which could be glimpsed the outline of a bra. "Just so-so, I guess. She really got a tanning when we were at Arrowhead. I never saw Daddy so mad as he was that time. And I'm sure glad it was Nancy instead of me."

"Why, what happened, Sally?" Betty casually asked, glancing at her stepsister who sat beside her. Hester's face was flushed, and her eyes very wide at this sudden and unexpected disclosure of parental wrath.

Sally giggled. "Well, they say that redheads are always stirring up a hornet's nest. Nancy thought it would be a great stunt to put a frog in Dad's fishing boots, but he didn't quite go for the idea. Especially when the frog jumped right into bed with Mom and nearly scared her out of a year's growth. Then Nancy tried to fib her way out of it by saying that the frog had just jumped in when she opened the door to look outside and see how the lake was, and of course she didn't get away with that one little bit."

"And I suppose you watched," Betty wanted to know.

"Sure, because I woke up when I heard all the commotion. Poor Nancy! I bet she was sorry she went on vacation with us, right about then. Of course Dad hadn't brought along the pingpong paddle or the split strap Mom uses here at home, but he pulled Nancy over his lap and gave her a bare-butt spanking with his hand that made her hind end red as a tomato. And when he got through with that, he told her she was going to get a little something extra for fibbing, and that it wouldn't have happened at all if she'd just owned up to pulling a practical joke like that and taking her medicine. He used Mom's big ivory comb which she'd packed and taken along on the trip, and Mom had to hold Nancy's wrists after the first couple of licks because it really must have stung her bare tail. Boy, was Dad mad!"

"All that terrible whipping for just a harmless little prank like that?" Hester couldn't help blurting out.

Sally looked at the auburnhaired daughter of Arthur Hadley, then back at Betty. "She's got to be kidding, Betty--" the sandyhaired teenager giggled.

"She's not," Betty shook her head with a very grave expression on her pretty face. "After all, Hester is eighteen and going to college, and she's never been spanked in all her life, have you, Hester?"

"No, of course I haven't," Hester went very red in the face and gave Betty an angry look. "And all I can say is that I just don't understand how the two of you can talk so calmly about something so dreadful and shameful and still not resent your parents for treating you that awful way!"

"Oh my," Sally shook her head again. "It s a good thing she isn't my sister, Bets, because she wouldn't be able to sit down for a week if Dad heard her give out with a spiel like that."

"If you don't mind, Betty," Hester drew herself up righteously, "I think I'd like to go back home. There are some books I want to unpack and get my room nice and ready when Father comes back home."

"Suit yourself, Hester. Do you mind if I stay and have a chin-fest with Sally, though?"

"I don't care what you do," Hester pointedly declared. She looked at Sally and then tersely remarked, "Glad to have met you," and then let herself out the front door.

"Well, look at her!" Sally exclaimed, making a circle with her finger at the side of her head, "Is she nuts?"

"No, Sally, but it's true what I said. She never in her life has had a hand laid on her. You see, her dad married my Mom. And Mom already told me that poor Hester has had her own way so long she's really going to have problems if somebody doesn't take a hand to her soon."

"I get it. And your mother is just the one who can do it, too."

"That's right. Now listen, Mom said I was to introduce Hester to our whole crowd. Try to pass the word to get the kids to talk about how they get spanked. That's what Mom wants Hester to hear, because Hester still doesn't believe that parents do it anymore."

"Well, all I can say is that in a way I wish she was right," Sally ruefully retorted, "Oh my gosh, I better get to the store before I forget. Now that we're back home and Mom has that split strap in her upstairs drawer, I'd just as soon not be reminded what it feels like on my bare heinie. See you around, Betty."

"You will indeed," the golden-haired teenager merrily retorted. "Just don't forget to tell Nancy and Bob that if they meet Hester it'd be a good idea just to mention about how they got spanked the last few times. Hester is really a nice girl, and I do like her, but she has such superior ways she isn't really going to make friends if she keeps it up."

"No she isn't," Sally agreed. "Well, it was swell seeing you, Bets. But I'll see you again tomorrow, huh?"

"Could be, Sally. Well, tell your Mom thanks for the milk and cookies. Next to my Mom, she makes the best cookies of anybody I know."

"I'll tell her that. Now I better hurry up to that store or I'll have something to tell your new sister that I'd just as soon not," Sally giggled.

As luck would have it Sally Jamison was destined to feel that split strap--her designation for the tawse her mother used for serious breaches of conduct--the very next afternoon. The day being excessively warm, Sally decided to take a swim in the little creek about half a mile to the north of the Jamison house. She biked out there and put her swimsuit in the bike basket. Then, believing that no one could see her from the clump of trees which framed the old creek, she hastily undressed and got into her suit. As luck would have it, Mrs. Nielby, an elderly and cantankerous widow who lived across the street from the Jamisons, was walking home from the convenient little shopping center about three blocks away from the creek, and happened to see Sally in the process of removing her suit, drying herself with the towel she had brought along, and then hastily dressing.

Scandalized, she promptly phoned Frieda Jamison, and when Sally walked into the house, the sophisticated brunette met her daughter at the door.

"What's this I hear about your putting on a peepshow, Sally?" she blandly asked.

"I--I don't know what you mean M--Mom," the pretty sandyhaired teenager stammered.

"Well, I don't recall that you asked my permission to go swimming in the creek, and particularly to do a striptease there where old Mrs. Nielby could see you, young lady."

"Darn her hide anyway, the old snitch!" Sally groaned.

But this justifiable protest didn't in the least soften Frieda Jamison's heart. "You know I've told you repeatedly, Sally, that you're a big girl now and there are some neighbors who just go out of their way to criticize. So it's best not to give them any room to do so. And it certainly wasn't proper for you to undress right there where you could be seen. I'm afraid I'm going to have to use the tawse. Go get it, please."

With a groan, Sally obeyed, and when she came down the stairs, to her mother's room carrying the strap with its ends split into three finger-like strips, she was biting her lips nervously. Her father would be home in another half-hour, and she hoped that her mother wouldn't tell him, because he might take it into his head to add a little extra dosage to the punishment.

"I'm going to give you fifteen, Sally, and I want you to count them one by one, and after each you're to say 'I won't ever undress by the creek again,' do you understand, Sally?"

"Y-yes, M--Mom," Sally was fighting the tears as she prepared herself. Something her mother had taught her to do over the years. Lifting up her skirt and slip, she knelt down on the couch, pressing her face against the cushion at one end, while her mother carefully folded the upturned garments high on her back so they wouldn't fall back down over her bottom. Next, Frieda Jamison tugged down the thin white cotton panties, and the sight of the twitching, milky, ripe bottomcheeks made her mother remark somewhat ironically, "I see you were in such a hurry you didn't completely dry yourself, Sally. Well, we'll see if the tawse can do that for you. Now get ready, and don't forget to count and to say what I told you to say."

Sally uttered another groan as she arched her hips and thrust out her shrinking, all too plump, bare buttocks to meet the kisses of the tawse. Slowly the leather strap fell, the finger-like strips stinging and whisking over the edges of the huddling naked nether globes. Sally took her whipping bravely, and managed to count each of the fifteen cuts and to utter the prescribed formula. Nevertheless, from the eleventh stroke on, she was crying softly. When it was over, her mother kept her kneeling there for a long minute, and then, lecturing her again, finally allowed her to get down off the couch, pull her panties back up and smooth down her clothes. Tearfully, Sally clung to her mother and kissed her, and thanked her for the whipping, as she promised not to repeat that outdoor undressing act ever again.

Her only consolation as she went slowly upstairs to her room, frantically rubbing her burning bottom now that her mother was out of the way and couldn't see, was that she would really have something to tell Hester Hadley the next time she saw her.

Indeed, Betty's mother's plan of "psychological warfare" against her new stepdaughter's immunity was beginning to be launched on all fronts.