Chapter 6

Arthur Hadley's proposal to Eleanor Stanfield caused the latter to rejoice that she had found ah understanding and sympathetic man who had already proved himself to be a more than adequate lover. That he would be an excellent father, too, she had not the slightest doubt, provided that he would accept her own advanced theories on the proper uprearing of offspring... and when Eleanor Stanfield thought of uprearing, she foresaw the image of a juvenile girlish posterior upraised over the maternal lap for justified chastisement.

However, Betty was not quite so jubilant at the outset when, just two evenings before she and her mother were to return to Claremont, the mature brownette widow closeted herself with the golden-haired teenager to break the news that soon there would be a new father to round out their little family.

Betty's lovely heart-shaped face at once grew tense with anxiety. "M-Mother," she faltered, "can I ask a question?"

"Of course you can, dear, and you also may." Eleanor Stanfield's smile was both teasing and authoritative, and the girl flushed as she recognized that she had been guilty of a grammatical slip: "Excuse me, I meant may I. Well, it's just that--I mean, you honestly are going to marry him, aren't you, Mother?"

"Quite honestly, my dear," Eleanor Stanfield laughed gaily. "You do approve of my choice, don't you?"

"Oh, for heavens sake, Mother," Betty nervously exclaimed, "I wouldn't dare make it my business to question what you do. And I do like him, yes, lots. But what I was getting at--"

"I think I see the end in view," her mother rather mischievously punned. "You're wondering if this is going to change our little disciplinary sessions, aren't you?"

"Y-yes, I-I am, Mother." Betty's lovely pink cheeks were now flaming crimson with embarrassment and she lowered her eyes and nervously twisted her fingers in her lap as she sat in the straight-backed chair regarding her mother over on the couch of their room. "I mean--I'd just die if--if he saw me getting spanked, Mother. I know that when I'm naughty I do deserve it, and I won't ever disobey and resist, but I was hoping that maybe--"

"Don't worry, darling. Mother has no intention, at least not for the first few months, of letting your new father watch you being spanked. Nor for that matter, of letting him punish you himself. But very seriously, dear, one day he will, and since he will be your father then, he will have every right. You do understand that, don't you?"

Betty lowered her eyes and uttered a deep sigh. Then docilely she murmured, "I-I suppose so, Mother. I guess the only thing to do is to see that I don't get spanked so the problem won't come up."

"Exactly. But though you're a very sweet and healthy and normal girl, my dear, I can't quite see you escaping punishment in the next few years, no matter how hard you try. Still and all, the last year or so you've done very well and I'm proud of you, darling."

"Oh Mother," Betty impulsively exclaimed as she rose from her chair and came to sit down beside Eleanor Stanfield on the couch, putting her arms around the handsome brownette matron and kissing her ardently, "I was really so worried. I would just die of shame if Mr. Hadley had to watch me getting punished... and I don't know what I'd do if you told him to go ahead and spank me, honestly I don't."

"Well, for the time being, that worry needn't concern you, darling. What does concern me, however, is that you will soon have a new sister, Hester, Hester. She's two years older than you are, but in my opinion lags far behind you in social adaptability and general good behavior. She's been spoiled a great deal, and that isn't Arthur's fault at all. I think he begins to realize it now. But then, of course, he does know how I've brought you up."

"Ohh Mother!" Betty gasped, and now even her dainty earlobes turned a vivid crimson as she hid her face in her mother's bosom. "You--you told him how you--how you--punish me when I'm naughty?"

"Yes, darling. But only because I felt him to be entirely trustworthy and sympathetic. Otherwise, naturally, I wouldn't even be considering marrying him. He's a very good man and very devoted to his daughter. So you must try to make friends with her. At the same time, Betty, I shouldn't at all be displeased if you let Hester understand from time to time that good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished."

"You--you mean you want me to let her know that I get spanked whenever you do it, Mother?" Betty anxiously inquired.

Eleanor Stanfield frowned and was silent for a moment, while the blushing golden-haired girl, nestling in her arms, looked anxiously up at her for a decision. Finally she said, "There are a few more things I must tell you, dear. First of all, Arthur--and perhaps if calling him Father or Daddy doesn't come easily at first, you might substitute by calling him Uncle Arthur--is thinking very seriously of going into business for himself and moving to Claremont with us. Now you know that our old house is still pretty big, and there's even a room for Jennie, our colored maid who stays with us. Arthur was very proud and didn't want to think about moving in with us, but I convinced him that it was silly to go ahead and buy a new house when the old one we've got is perfectly satisfactory."

"He-he goes around to offices and tries to straighten them out, doesn't he, Mother?" Betty wanted to know.

"Something like that, darling. At any rate, he's going into business for himself so that he can be home with us. And of course Hester will live with us too. I'm so glad it's a nice big two-story house and there's plenty of room. There were times about five or six years ago when I seriously thought of selling it, but I'm certainly glad I didn't as things worked out now. But what I'm getting at, darling, is that when you go back to school this fall, you'll naturally resume all your associations with your friends and our good neighbors. Like the Gilmores, and the Carruthers and the Jamisons. And you are well aware, I'm sure, that your friends, both the boys and the girls of those three families, are punished just about the way you are."

"Yes, that's true, Mother."

"Well, of course you're going to introduce Hester to them. And since it's going to be a while before school starts for all of you, there'll be a few weeks in which you'll have time to get to know one another pretty well. Hester is probably going to find out that most of your friends are punished the way I punish you, dear. It will have an effect upon her, and I think that it may prepare her for a redirection of her own conduct, once she sees that her father and I both are agreed on impartial and just chastisement when it is deserved."

"I see." The lovely golden-haired teenager pursed her lips and her lovely forehead was furrowed with concentration for a moment. Then, with another almost doleful sigh, she managed, "Well, Mother, you can rely on me. And she is awfully bossy, isn't she? Are you going to spank her too?"

"I'll tell you another little secret. I should like nothing better than to turn that young lady over my lap, have her skirts up and her panties down and apply the spanking strap thoroughly until she realizes that it's time she brought herself up short and began to consider other people beside herself. But that can't be done overnight, and it can't be done too drastically until Hester is emotionally prepared. That's where you and your friends are going to come in. And of course I'm going to talk to Louise Gilmore and to Mabel Carruthers, as well as to Frieda Jamison about my plans. In other words, darling, Hester is going to discover a new kind of domestic regimen which she didn't dream exists, and yet she will find out also that it's perfectly wholesome and natural and that once a punishment is over, it is forgotten and parents and children are good friends as always. Don't you feel that with me, darling?"

"Oh, yes, Mummy," Betty sighed, this time with a tremulous smile as she hugged her mother tightly and turned up her lovely mouth to be kissed. "I know I don't like spanking and I never shall, but you've shown me how to understand that when I'm naughty I have to be punished for my own good. And then when it's over, I want to be your little girl again and have you love me just as always."

"I do, darling, you know I do. Mummy is going to have many nice little treats for her favorite girl if you manage to give Hester a liberal education as you go along. But we'll play it by ear, so to speak, darling. And now, I think you'd better help me pack, because we're both going to have dinner this evening with your new... well, I'll tell him that you're going to call him Uncle Arthur. He won't insist on anything more until you feel it of your own desire, darling. That's another thing that makes him such a wonderful man and why I'm going to be proud to be his wife, Betty dear."

Arthur Hadley had made some long-distance phone calls from his hotel room at Malibu, sounding out accounts who might be willing to work on a retainer basis with him when he began his new firm of industrial management, and the results were extremely gratifying. Accordingly, he sent off a registered special delivery letter to his employers indicating that he was resigning and that he was grateful for the consideration with which he had always been treated. Fortunately, the accounts which he had contacted were not under contract to his employers and therefore he could proceed with the full knowledge that he was acting in an ethical way. When he broke the news to Hester, she sulked a little, so much so that again he felt his palm itching to slap her--and this time, instead of in the face, as might normally have been his reaction in previous days, he had the impulse to take her over his lap and slap her bottom soundly. If only she could be as good-natured and amenable to reason as lovely Betty was! "I realize it means giving up friends and contacts, Hester, but it's going to be the same for me," he patiently explained to his daughter. "I'm going to have to get used to being in a new town and making new friends, and from a business point of view it might be a little tougher to start out from scratch in my own business. But it's really what I've always wanted, and Eleanor is a wonderful woman and she's going to make a wonderful wife and a mother to you, darling. I hope that you do like her."

"Oh, she's all right, I guess," Hester diffidently replied. "But Betty is absolutely insipid. She's such a goody-goody girl, and we don't have too much in common."

"Well, she's the outdoor type, and you're not, to begin with," Arthur Hadley said. He was striving to be perfectly rational and logical, because he realized that his only child had a precocious mind and that an appeal to her intellect would go much farther--at least at this point-- than to her emotions. "It wouldn't do you any harm to be out in the sun more, Hester. It might clear up that acne which bothers you so much."

"Father!" Hester gasped, and her cheeks flushed with annoyance at this reminder of a physical defect which she found too childish for words.

"I mean it, Hester!" he said more sharply than was his want.

Hester again shrugged. "Well of course, Father" she drawled in that maddeningly impersonal tone, which Arthur Hadley had come to find so irritating of late. "Of course I'll try to get along with Betty. Am I still going to the same college, though?"

"Probably not, my dear. There's an excellent girls' school in Claremont, and tomorrow I'll phone the dean of admissions and find out if we can get your credits transferred."

"All right, if that's what you want, Father," Hester had the refined air of a martyr. Once again her father felt the itch in his palm, not one signifying money, but rather an overwhelming instinct to smack a girlish posterior quite close to him. But manfully he restrained himself.

"We're going to be married at Eleanor's church in Claremont, Hester dear," he told her when he had full control of his voice and reactions. "And then we'll go for two weeks on a honeymoon, perhaps to Mexico City. I haven't quite decided yet but I'm going to take it up with Eleanor tonight. You and Betty will stay at Eleanor's house, and she has a very wonderful colored maid, who, I'm told, is a marvelous cook and very warmhearted. You can spend the time getting better acquainted with Betty, and I'm sure that she'll introduce you to many of her friends."

"Oh, dear," Hester sighed heavily, "she's only sixteen, Father, and so her friends are likely to be about that age, and you're forgetting that I'm going to college in September."

"I'm forgetting nothing, Hester. Don't try to anticipate trouble, please. I'm sure that everything will be fine." Even as he said this, Arthur Hadley wasn't quite so sure. But now that he had found this wonderful, fascinating woman, he wasn't about to lose her just because Hester might register tantrums on the emotional storm gauge scale....

And so, on the following Wednesday, Arthur Hadley and Eleanor Stanfield were married in the little Episcopalian church where she had first been wed and where Betty had been baptized. The happy couple escaped the traditional shower of rice from a bevy of Eleanor's friends, and hurried off to Arthur's Buick which was waiting at the curb. Hester, as the maid of honor, glanced forlornly at her father, then at her new stepsister Betty, who was simply adorable in a white chiffon dress and veil and a bouquet of gladioli. Jennie, a portly smiling talkative negress of about forty-eight, dressed in her Sunday best, brushed a tear away from her eye, and waved a handkerchief at the happy couple. "There they go," she said mournfully, rolling her eyes, "now you chillun better come along home. I'm gonna cook you a real nice supper to make you sort of take your mind off bein' orphans for two weeks."

That morning, on the telephone in her own room, Eleanor Stanfield had performed a few last chores whose purpose was dedicated to the proposition of making her new husband-to-be the beneficiary of her advanced ideas on the Proper care of offspring. She had made three phone calls, one each to Louise Gilmore, another to Mabel Carruthers, and the other to Frieda Jamison. Each of them had been about the same subject with variations.

Her first call, to the stately and dignified and still extremely attractive forty-four-year old silver-blonde Louise Gilmore had been rather more intimate than those to her other two friends, though this was not to say that she did not maintain with Mabel and Frieda quite as warm and happy a relationship as with Louise. However, Louise Gilmore had been her dearest friend and aided her most of all during the trying times when her husband had suddenly died and she had found herself bereft of energy and ambition to go on.

"Well, Louise, I just wanted to talk to you before we met at the church this afternoon, dear. It's been a sort of whirlwind courtship and I'm wonderfully happy."

"I'm glad to hear it, darling, you deserved it. From what I hear, he's a very fine person and he's going to settle in our community."

"That's true, Louise. As soon as we get back from Mexico City, he's opening his own office in the mall, and of course his daughter Hester is going to live with us."

"I think it's perfectly wonderful! You could call it fate, because he was a widower, wasn't he?"

"Yes. His daughter is eighteen, just the age of your Janet, and I must say I only wish Hester could have profited from the training you've given Janet these last years."

"Well, Eleanor, that's very kind of you to say, but I'm still not satisfied with Janet's thoughtlessness and impulsiveness. In fact, just a few minutes ago, I told her to go write down in her demerit book a couple of black marks for breaking one of my best dishes."

"Oh dear, I sort of feel responsible, this being my wedding day! The poor darling must have been upset because she was thinking of the pretty dress she was going to wear to my wedding, no doubt," Eleanor Stanfield laughed.

"Be that as it may, so on Friday she will just have a few more spanks to pay up."

"And how are Tony and Constance?"

"I'm happy to say they haven't been in too much trouble lately. But I had to whip Constance last week for tearing her new dress. She's somewhat inclined to be a tomboy, and it's not at all becoming."

"Well, I just happened, to think my new daughter Hester will be going to Claremont college along with your Janet the end of September. I think Janet to be a very helpful influence on her."

"Now you're being most complimentary, Eleanor darling, but I think I detect something concealed behind this nice little conversation or ours. Out with it!"

"You're so refreshingly direct, Louise!" Eleanor Stanfield laughed. "Well, it is true. You see, during our honeymoon, Betty and Hester are going to be alone in the house with Jennie. And I'd be very grateful if you'd allow Betty to bring Hester along sometimes, and I wouldn't at all be displeased if it would just slip out that Janet and Tony and Constance are punished the old-fashioned way and excellently, I might add."

"Again you're flattering me, darling. Thanks. Well, that's an easy enough favor to handle, and of course you've got my promise I will. So you think that Hester's spoiled?"

"She's egotistic, vain, conceited about her intellect, which I will grant is quite good. She's inconsiderate and quite rude. And something of a snob, because she's always breaking in to show off some French phrase or some item or other she's just acquired in her studies, just to impress us all."

"That's really regrettable. But I'm sure that eventually you will straighten her out and she'll be just as well behaved as your darling Betty."

"Thank you, Louise. Coming from you, my dearest and oldest friend,--well, what I really mean, is friend of longest standing, because heaven knows you're certainly not old at all--"

"I'm glad you added that in time," Louise Gilmore laughed.

"You know what I meant to say, Louise darling. Oh, I almost forgot to ask, how's Hilda?"

Hilda was the German maid whom Fred and Louise Gilmore had hired about eighteen months ago. She was a buxom, quite attractive blonde of about twenty-eight. And she had also been introduced to disciplinary measures at the Gilmore household. Hilda had originally come to Claremont to live with her cousin, but financial reversals had forced him to sell his house and take a job in Los Angeles, whereupon his bewildered and attractive cousin found herself practically abandoned. At this critical juncture in Hilda Messering's life, Fred and Louise Gilmore had offered her a job as a maid, with the understanding that she would work diligently to improve her English and to qualify for citizenship, and also that she would submit to corporal chastisement just as the Gilmore children did. Now Hilda was as docile as Jane, Tony and Constance, and loved her master and mistress dearly.

"Well, Hilda is improving and she's going to take her citizenship test any day now." Louise Gilmore replied to Eleanor's last question. "But last night she burned the pie I'd asked her to bake for Fred, and so I had to give her the dog-whip."

"In front of Janet, Tony and Constance, I suppose?" Eleanor Stanfield asked.

"Naturally, that is part of her humiliation, and was explained to her when we engaged her, Eleanor dear. She bent over the top of the straight-backed chair on which I made her kneel, drew up her own skirt and slip, and I rolled down her pantie-girdle. The poor dear is wearing a very tight rubber one these days because she's become extremely weight-conscious and wants to lose some pounds in a hurry. Just the same," And here Louise Gilmore giggled in a most unladylike way, "I can tell you it takes some maneuvering to get a tight pantie-girdle down from such bulky hips and round buttocks. But I managed, naturally. She got eighteen cuts of the dogwhip over her backside, and I finished with two strokes on each of her thighs, just as a little reminder to be more careful in the future."

"And then, I suppose," Eleanor Stanfield continued, "you made her kiss the dogwhip and thank her for the good whipping."

"Naturally, and then she apologized to Fred, and she went back to the kitchen, Eleanor dear, and she baked another pie and this one was perfect. It just shows you that a little discipline at the right time will do wonders."

"That, darling," Eleanor Stanfield, about to become Eleanor Hadley, concluded, "is a maxim which ought to be engraved in letters a foot high over the door of every house containing children. Well, I better hurry and get ready now for meeting you in church--and I don't want to be late in getting Arthur now that I've found the man I love."

And thus, as Eleanor and Arthur Hadley sped away towards the airport from whence they would shortly fly to Mexico City for a wonderful two-week honeymoon, the future of Hester Hadley was being forged in the mysterious crucible of neighborly parental practice.