Chapter 12
Compromising Solutions
"Las Palomas. The doves." Ron turned the car onto the narrow, tree-lined lane, high on a hillside far from Orinda's center. Houses clutched perilous toeholds on the steep landscape. The November sky shone clear.
"More like a hawk's nest." His sister frowned. "What's Spanish for 'chickenhawk'?"
"That's her house." He pointed as they drove slowly past. He looked for a place to park. There didn't even seem to be room to turn around without plummeting into some home's parlor.
"Remember all those stories about the Hardy Boys or somebody going into the dark mansion when they should know better?" Jan asked.
"It's daytime and her place is a bungalow, not any kind of Dracula's castle." He eased the car behind a dust-streaked Toyota claiming on a bumper strip to be a Federation fleet vessel.
"We still know better."
Back down the road a burly fellow with mutton chop whiskers strode up the driveway to another house. A heavy brown belt girdled his gold tunic. A long scabbard swung at his left side. He carried a half-gallon jug of something murky and organic-looking.
"Jan, I think that guy has a sword." Ron felt disoriented. They got out into the chilling autumn air.
"Let's ask if he's a knight," she sniffed. "We could use one."
They mounted flagstone steps to Dorothy Tilden's front doorway. A flurry of rain earlier that week had refreshed her drought-struck tarns. They looked glossy.
Ron pressed the bell button . . . and electronic chimes promptly pealed the opening theme from The Lion In Winter. He felt a tug at his shirt. Jan's finger directed his gaze down the narrow street again.
A sun-bright, flesh-heavy matron and a stately, tranquil-faced woman carrying a Celtic harp marched up that same driveway. Both dressed like Medieval abbesses.
"So Caledonia Roundsong sets fashion trends." He shrugged. The door opened by his elbow.
Dorothy Tilden leered at them both. A nasty whipcord martinet dangled its lashes from a shiny leather handle firmly in her grip. "Bibbity-bobbity-fcooI" She ushered them into her front room. Pointedly, she chained the door and threw the second bolt. A panther-black pants suit presented her body, its short jacket ornamented by a silver rose pin. A single tear-shaped ruby glistened at the end of a thorn on the polished stem.
The martinet swung languidly, but effectively. It didn't look at all like those soft leather, broad-lashed sex toys Ron had seen on sale in San Francisco.
"Just a reminder in case you forget your vows of impurity and obedience." Dorothy Tilden threw back her head to yodel: "Hickery, dickery dock Up sprang Ronnie's cock. The whip licked down And kissed his crown. Whimpery, limpery jock."
She gestured down a hallway. "Through the magic arches you'll find some duds laid out for you. Last door on the right. Don't be long. It's dress-up time, children."
Ron felt the clammy sweat at the small of his back as he grasped Jan's nail-bitten hand. He led the way toward an unknown and fearful destiny.
"Damn Professor Porter and his anti-denim jeans campaign." Gerry Vestry hoisted a snifter of Drambuie.
"Damn the Academic Senate for endorsing it." Lucretia Sue raised her Martell Cordon Bleu. Her lean legs coiled under her chair. Burgundy corduroy boot-cut Levis matched her wine-dark satin blouse.
"And damn whoever thought up that protest march that landed our kidlets in steaming shit." Susie Salton lofted, then drained her third Cherry Marnier. Ears pink from liquid cheer poked from her wild brown hair.
"How did the beloved professor phrase it?" Gerry Vestry watched as Susie carved herself another slice of carrot cake. The Just Desserts box lay on the desk in the Sigma executive office.
" 'Corporal correction applied with requisite vigor to the inferior portions of the torso,' " the tall Georgian grad quoted. "Could be tolerably unpleasant, given his usual specs."
"Better than a two-week suspension." The vice-president wrinkled her nose. "I'm just glad you hustled those three out of the crowd before the campus police arrived to take names and numbers."
"Professor Porter won't peach, provided justice gets administered for the revolt." Lucretia Sue swirled her cognac and inhaled. "A fair man, I recall, and he did do Mona a nice turn by trying to discourage that cousin of hers."
Susie sniggered rudely. "Striping Rita Henshaw's buns for the crime of doing what Rump-and-A-Dozen Porter would love to do himself, sure."
"So whipping Rita only caused her to run amok. He tried." The carrot-haired grad shrugged. "That's how Mona got into the jeans protest-she'll worship Nora's sandal prints forevermore."
Gerry Vestry brooded. "She seemed so sensible at first- Nora, I mean. That thing with the Gormish clown really festers at her."
"I dragged her down to the Psych Department to talk with Carrie Mott-Dronkers. Nora feels somehow responsible for loving the cowflop and needs to be punished for cleaning him off her shoes." Lucretia Sue finished the Martell. "Either that or awakening to the fact of male exploitation has turned her militant against patriarchal rules."
"You bets your money, you gets your explanation." The blonde v-p stood up. "The girls should meet us at his house. Professor Porter will provide all the necessary?"
"When he tutored me in Old Icelandic," the Georgian drawled, "he had the finest collection of punishment props outside of Torquemada's basement. It can only have grown since then."
Susie seized the Cherry Marnier bottle for a splash in her glass and a parting guzzle.
Her face naturally colorless, Judy Latimer looked frozen to the bronze lawn seat; She shivered from moment to moment. More than the late autumn chill beset her. At intervals, Mona Forbes threw a furtive glance up the rising land at the ominous sUmmerhouse ornamenting Professor Porter's two-acre lot.
"Bred into the blood, like Wilkinson steel and xenophobia," Nora Quincannon murmured. "Sarah says Porter's great-uncle introduced Swinburne to the Marquis de Sade. Maybe not in person, but at least his writings. There's nothing more superfluous than giving an Englishman a handful of French flogging books."
She favored the rear of the professor's spreading, manoral home with a hard glare. "A British public school education makes the whole elaborate canvas of Les 120 Journees de Sodom redundant."
Judy's eyes darted uncertainly from Nora to Mona. "Is she all right?"
"I think she was raised Irish," the other girl whispered. "They're funny about the English."
A dapper figure in tweed jacket and Orkney Islands fisherman's sweater strolled around the side of his house. The ends of his mustache appeared to quiver in anticipation.
"Welcome, young ladies. I see you have the, um, articles with you." He noted the three demurely rolled paper grocery sacks at their feet. He touched his jacket pocket. "I have the Polaroids."
"To quote Lord Nelson-" Nora began.
"Chill weather to strip in, professor." Lucretia Sue's drawl knifed down the path he'd come along. "And all that Judge Jeffreys jazz."
A red-and-blue checked coat of Pendleton wool made her hair a delicate halo by contrast. She inhaled briskly. "This sudden, nippy weather could put roses in a girl's nefhercheeks."
Professor Porter beamed genially at her and the two sorority officers who followed her down the white-graveled way. "I apologize for not meeting you all properly. As you know, I do interviews on the university radio station. I should have had one with Honey Fitz Sullivan, the celebrated film star.
"However, that distinguished personality failed to show up at the studio. I ran late finding a substitute in Reverend Roundsong. Pity," he tilted his head in regret, "I so wished to ask Miss Sullivan why she insists upon lending her endorsement to a manufacturer's line of designer blue jeans."
His voice curdled expressively at the final words.
"Sarah claims they're the only model comfortable for the . . . amply seated," Susie chirped up, "unless you want to mail order from Frederick's."
"That's valuable to know," Lucretia Sue assured her. The woman turned to Nora. "You and I arranged this compromise with the professor."
The pledge stood up, a short fur-trimmed jacket ending above drumskin-snug, heavily ribbed, murky navy serge slacks. The effect powerfully suggested Lo Due Thong's ganymede, Taylor.
"We've agreed to his terms," Nora stated slowly, " 'sound physical punition of . . .' " Her lip wrinkled. "Our 'steatopygenous persons.' " Judy and Mona exchanged blank glances. Susie chortled. "Your fat asses." Her eyes glowed, merry and feral.
Lucretia Sue raised an eyebrow at her. "Sounds to me more like he meant 'forming fatty or generous buttocks,' by extension from the Greek for cushions, specifically referencing the muscle masses upholstering the ischial prominences."
Porter inclined in a bow. "Most learnedly discoursed, Miss Merydith."
The grad student eyed the three pledges. "You will all note that the agreement does not limit the punishment to the callipygean zones. It does call for infliction of disciplinary distress to your plump-bottomed bodies."
She grinned suddenly. "An' y'all should know that I learned that bit of citified quibbling the hard way from the master himself." Her head tilted toward the prof.
Nora's face hardened ever more solemnly. "We have also agreed that he reserves the right to judge the adequacy of the execution. However," her chin lifted in minute defiance, "in the interests of delicacy, nothing could be conceded about observing the infliction."
Porter waved toward the summerhouse. "You'll find everything to hand there, even a golfing glove for grip, if you wish."
"Admirable foresight, professor." Lucretia Sue nodded to Gerry Vestry and Susie. "Now, we have three sorry-eyed culprits, three pairs of forbidden jeans, and-by a strange synchronicity-three of us."
"Right on, 'Cretia Borgia." Susie Salton slapped her skirted thigh. Hair thrusting in all directions, she seemed mad as Ophelia. "Three medicinal doses of stick for each wayward girl."
Her flushed face twisted in a smile toward Mona. "With a special supplement afterward to my own dear sob sister, for breaking guardian angel policy. I strictly laid down the law: running afoul of campus rules would mean MURDER on your tubby tuberosities."
She winked at Porter. "Is that acceptably orotund?"
Gerry Vestry interposed quickly, "We never settled the issue of whether Nora should have any augmentation since she definitely should have known better."
"Leading youth into sin by bad example." Susie's admonishing finger quivered at the older woman.
"Perhaps that should depend on deportment under disci- pline," Lucretia Sue suggested. "We've already agreed on a penalty of six of the best ..." Porter's countenance clouded.
"... from each of us. Eighteen stripes across the felonious fannies."
His expression lightened. "Thrice six? Satisfactory."
Lucretia Sue extended her thumb toward the blue sky. "The first batch appropriately over the damning britches." Her index finger uncurled. "The second set across panties."
Her middle digit saluted. "The third lot slathered across the next logical progression."
Gerry Vestry tapped a brown-booted toe at one crumpled sack. "Since this isn't the campus, let me suggest you girls put the jeans on."
Judy quickly hefted her grocery bag. "May we be excused?" Her pale face showed innocent hope.
"Why?" The vice-president's silver glasses flashed brit-tlely in the sunlight. "Do you have to pee?"
A crisp breeze roving down Orinda's valley stirred the wintery bare limbs of a drought-chastened tree in the quiet back yard.
"I understand." Nora sighed and bent to unbuckle her shoes.
"I guess she likes movies." Jan Ladrone surveyed the posters covering every inch of wall in the neat, obviously spare bedroom. "Who's that?"
"Suzy Delair. She made a fortune getting spanked in French films in the Fifties, along with Dany Robin." Ron picked up the filmy blue Cleopatra gown he knew too well. "The Postit says His."
He peeled off the yellow scrap of paper and started to undress. His sister looked around the room. "I guess this must be Hers."
A bead-swinging Marilyn Monroe winked come-hitherly to advertise Some Like It Hot above a knotty pinewood dresser. Draped across the bureau top lay a flame-colored set of harem pajamas.
As he began to strip, Ron set his shirt and trousers on the bed beneath Honey Fitz Sullivan's naughtily curved rump and flouncy skirt, raised almost to the critical point for The Sins of Emile Zola. FILMDOM'S FABULOUS FANNY! the poster announced, IN THE FIRST AUTHENTIC CAN-CAN E*V*E*R FILMED!
Ron turned his back discreetly on Topkapi's lecherous, canary-haired Melina Mercouri to shed his shorts. He doffed his undershirt and slid the Serpent of Old Nile's queenly array over his body under the smoky insouciant eyes of Dietrich incarnating The Scarlet Emperess.
"Okay. Showtime?" Jan asked. Her nether assets ballooned the diaphanous pj pants. The long filmy sleeves on the top met around barely opaque breast circlets that loosely tied under the girl's pectoral thrust.
"I hope someone breaks a leg," her brother muttered. Above the door frame as they exited Mae West reclined in a florid honkey-tonk odalisque.
Mona shakily unhooked the wide black lace belt cinching her green pencil skirt. The outfit gave her hips the aspect of a bottle, one pleasingly full.
"The lass with the most undy veiling her dainty rear gets first licks," Susie proposed as her sob sister hesitated.
"Take them down," Gerry Vestry advised Judy. The freshman's fingers had frozen on the fasteners of baggy-seated candy-apple slacks. Eyes shut, she fumbled and yanked them far below her blue, down-filled jacket.
A soft morsel misted her loins, displaying the Nordic blonde pubic moss vividly through the sheer robin's egg fabric.
"A gal's small clothes certainly earn their name, these days," Lucretia Sue observed.
Mona stepped out of her skirt. Lime-colored tricot and spandex, with an inch of lace along the waistband, barely gave her bikini-sized coverage. She tore at her grocery bag, her dignity in rags.
Beside her, Nora had peeled down and stepped free of her navy stuff. Sturdy, unflattering undies cut to near directoire length gleamed an uncompromising white over her loins and bottom. She folded the serge thoughtfully before exchanging it for the denim jeans in her sack.
"Toe-touchers for the initial six," Gerry Vestry pronounced. "The benter the better, when it's over real clothing."
Mona zipped and buttoned her faded britches. She huddled her arms around her torso. The HONEY FITZ SASSY ASSETS logo rose in arrogant gold thread across her elegantly curved right posterior pocket.
"The second dose, coming down like a hot knife into butterballs, with hands glued to knees." Susie demonstrated with firmly planted palms and a skittish wiggle of her coyly cocked seat. Professor Porter's gaze lingered upon the sight.
"The final half-dozen on tiptoe, leaning over the table," Lucretia Sue determined.
"Table?" Susie waggled her rump and came erect. She glanced from the lanky Georgian to the summerhouse and back. Her beaked nose quivered on the scent of knowledge.
"Table," the grad student repeated. "Stout oak, from a New England colonial taproom, I believe."
Porter nodded. "My dealer claimed it came from The Fox and Hind Inn, a feature of Arkham, Massachusetts, until that silly university on the Miskatonic bulldozed three blocks of historic downtown property for its Business Department annex. The table's pegwork and solid as a Puritan Father's oath."
"Miss Merydith, may I impose upon you to begin?" Gerry Vestry gestured toward Nora's washed and threadbare jeans. "I should explain to the professor that we required the girls to perform some preparations."
"About twenty separate launderings, in a galvanized tub with a stone and washboard," Lucretia Sue specified. "Remembering the house rule, shall we agree to remit a stroke if a seam splits?"
"The purpose is punishment, not sport," Porter considered slowly, "yet, unlike new wine and old skins, the more mature bottoms tend to burst their sacking. I am agreeable to the stipulation."
The carroty redhaired grad student began up the flagstone steps to the summerhouse. "Shall we .... ?"
The rusty redheaded pledge followed, gravejawed.
"You two face the rest of us and listen," Gerry Vestry admonished.
Susie had her eyes on the haunchy sway as Nora climbed, her gluteals rippling under the wash-bleached denim. She spoke dreamily, "Mona, dearest, keep your eyes on mine. No squinting or winking and absolutely no blinking at the sound of the cuts. Watch me and focus your soul on Nora."
Stillness hovered over the bare tree limbs. In the distance, a creature yelped. The brisk air livened their senses as words came clearly through the summerhouse windows.
"Touch your toes. Those weekly Bad Word paddlings have been giving you practice, I see; but let's try for a tighter fit along the deep south." A dry chuckle. "Stand up with your hands over your head . . . Reach for the stars . . . now dig into your drawers and tug hard on that waistband just behind the small of your back. Nevermind that piss-pickle sour face. It may grab you in the crotch, but that's not the point, is it?
"There, now bend over again, TIGHT! Brace those knees, and keep tugging . . . Good, you can touch those toes. Let's see if I can't win you a little reprieve by popping some of that finest quality Levi Strauss stitching."
A live-sounding thing hummed sharply in the tangy autumn air. "Oooo-eeee! What British penal institution manufactures this indecorous tail-slicer, I do wonder? Could that tip be weighted?"
A vicious singing cut the expectant silence.
"I'm plum-pluperfect-positive that has a steel core, as well."
Judy Latimer's eyelid fluttered in dread. Thhhhhwhomp!
The pale girl jumped. Beside her, Mona showed whites around her irises as she stared at Susie's gluttonous grin. The leathery larrup quivered tangibly in the air about them.
Thhhhhwhiiick!
Judy sucked breath across her teeth, face strained. The sound echoed, long and harsh. ThhhhhWHACK!
Mona's face seemed transfigured by shared agony. Her lips crinkled, bloodless. Splayed fingers clutched her denimed thighs. THHHHHWHOCK!
"Ten-second intervals," Susie broke the perfection of mood. "I guess with three stiff courses in a meal you can afford to gulp the soup-and it's steaming hot."
The fifth juicy stroke rolled through the air.
"Nose down," Lucretia Sue's voice demanded, "and hold that rear up at attention!"
The sixth thumped most meatily of all. A high, strained warble grudgingly followed: "Hhhieeeee-!"
The sounds quieted but for a distant sniff at ragged intervals. Finally the lean grad student appeared, arm stretched behind her. She towed Nora, firmly pinching one reddened and twisted ear shell.
The woman's tightly screwed face showed brick-dark under her rusty hair. She walked antsily, fists waving at her sides, as the two paraded down the stone-paved steps.
Gerry Vestry nodded thoughtfully at Susie. "Play through."
"Goodie." She gripped Mona's shoulders and rotated her toward the summerhouse. The freshman's mouth strained down at the corners, hard and sad as she saw Nora. Susie prodded her on forward.
The star-endorsed blue jeans showed Mona's classic inverted-heart bottom to succulent advantage as she climbed the uncaring stones. She passed the descending pair with a flinching, averted face.
Lucretia Sue grinned at her terror.
"Oh, run into the roundhouse, Nelly- They can't corner you there!"
The Georgian trooped her charge down to the bronze bench. "That's a little Okefenokee calypso," she explained.
Her fingers released Nora's tweaked ear. "Now stand and listen, Ms. Ringleader. You didn't organize that damn fool dress code protest rally, but you're the pledge class president at Sigma, and neither Mona nor Judy would have their sausage-cased pork buns on the scalding iron if you hadn't been there yourself."
Susie's rapid chatter spilled through the summerhouse window. "Fingers on toesies . . . Those back pockets of yours look ready to burst without any tugging. I guess we can forget your scanties, too. I've seen sturdier veils on flower girls at weddings."
Swwwuuuttt!
Nora's nostrils flared. She raised a hand to wipe at a red-rimmed eye, then dropped it. Swwwaaattt!
Gerry Vestry whistled low, in disgust. "Too fast." "Su-Su-Su-" Mona's liquid tones reached them. Swwwiiiccckkk!
"Ngaa-ngaa . . . Miss Salton, p-please-!" Sppplaaaccckkk!
"I'll bet you could-" The fifth driving scorcher interrupted Lucretia Sue. "-broil liver over her-" The sixth raised a pleading whine. "-broad-cheeked assets right now."
Mona emerged as if carting live coals in her rear pockets. Her honey-soft hair flew from side to side. She gulped down sobs and blotted her sleeve at her eyes. The gait down the stone steps resembled a lizard scuttling on sunbaked rock.
"I take it that hurt." Gerry Vestry nudged her glasses higher. Susie had not left the summerhouse.
"Intensely, m-miss." The pledge wiped salty runnels from her chin. Nora watched her ruefully.
"So will the next six." The vice-president took Judy by the hand. "Let's see if we can shake any lingering starch out of those jeans. Professor Porter indicted denim before the Academic Senate as 'shapeless, stiff, unyielding and unfeminine.' " His attention seemed divided between the very female jut of Mona's blue cotton britches and the tight fit clothing Judy's peachcleft as it wiggled up to punishment. The freshman let herself be drawn along, ashen in surrender.
Indistinct voices came down the hill. Susie finally emerged, face flaming. "Sorry, Ger' ..."
She stumbled down the steps to stand silently.
"Whacking off after whacking away?" Lucretia Sue diagnosed, as the active rubbed her hawk's nose with a disappointed finger.
"Damn," the frazzle-haired girl muttered, "I thought just a touch would send sky rockets out my-"
"A prime waste of Kundalini energy," Porter disapproved. "Limitless potency without direction characterizes today's hasty generation."
Thwwwlllccckk!
The keen, biting cane strokes came at twenty second intervals.
"Even money Judy wets the floor before we're done." Susie attempted a snide grin.
"You will, too, sticky finger." Lucretia Sue gave a critical frown. "But not with piss cider."
"Oh, my GOD!" Jan squeaked in awe. "It's her."
Smokey-lensed Foster-Grants regarded the brother and sister under a distinctive crown of auburn-streaked midnight hair. Honey Fitz Sassy Asset jeans hugged spray-can tight around the multi-million dollar hip structure of Honey Fitz Sullivan herself. She stretched lynx-like on the living room couch.
"So kind." The star flashed a name-above-title smile, the ivory dazzling between full sex-goddess lips.
Ron glared at Dorothy Tilden, his gut tight with betrayal. The Cleopatra gown swayed about him, tailored for ShandelTa Ruse's lush African hips and gourd-ripe breasts.
He'd worn the color off the video tape of Lulu-Hotpants Hooker. The troilism sequence with Max Schell as Alva Schon and Ingrid Bergman portraying Countess Geshwitz had kept him masterbating till he'd exhausted the family supply of vaseline.
His mind retained every incredible pink square inch from the three separate bathing sequences in Sabre Tooth Women. His hands moved self-consciously as he felt the ego-stunning inspection by the screen icon.
"Don't cover it up, thunderpud." Miss Sullivan spoke, the velvet of her voice tickling down his spine. "You musta wowed 'em in the first rows."
"Some of the flightier faculty members acted as if the asp had gotten loose up his leg," Dorothy Tilden reminisced. "Dr. Burgesson foamed something about Russ Colombo as they carried her out."
"They shoulda known Elvis," the goddess assured her. "I came every time he touched me in Hound Dog Harem Holiday-but so did he, after his 'vitamin' shots."
"How-how was he?" Jan whispered, entranced.
"Just like he sang, blunt and filling the aching void in your belly till you hadda scream. He had these pink pills could keep him stiff for . . . well, I clocked it once to four hours, twenty-eight minutes, and seven seconds." She shrugged. "Coulda been longer, but we hadda shoot a scene that day."
"You could lend her your plaster-caster souvenir," Dorothy Tilden suggested wickedly. "But I forget, the demure young thing only takes deliveries in the rear."
"Chacun a son gout." Honey Fitz Sullivan's Technicolor lips parted farther on the right. She popped her gum with the crisp authority of a Brooklyn veteran.
"I'm glad you approve." Professor Porter spoke to Gerry Vestry as he drank in Judy's wine-like wriggles. The girl's newly-warmed jeans seat could not stand quiet.
"That cane had to be custom made," the senior marveled. "It slices like a dream."
"Off the rack. No, I assure you-but not the netherside of the line. Willoughby and Pratt produce them for Harrod's in London, along with a superior grade of tawse and . . . um, sundry domestic discipline tools."
"It should feel worse over teddies," Susie intruded brightly. "Rump steak ala mode next on the bill o' faire. Pucelle tartare, with only a wisp of dressing."
She scowled at Nora. "Except for extremists."
"Lead off," Gerry Vestry suggested. Her set, serious face followed the slow march up the scaffold steps to the place of execution.
"Peel them down, Pledge Quincannon . . . right to the ankles, if you please . . ." Susie's giggle rose. "Does your mother mail those jogging shorts to you? Nobody under forty has worn anything like that . . . well, Sarah has some British undies that would look prudish in a nunnery, but an American!" She chortled.
"So! Palms smack across the patellas. Show me the full cleft of your ca-ca crack under those white bloomers. Pity I can't see 'Cretia Borgia's marks. I'll have to overlap them, if we aim for the same areas."
Somewhere in the Orinda hills, a beast gave mournful tongue, seeking a mate.
"Unnnggg!" The sudden girl-cry blended with a thwacking report, cane curving across clothed meat. A second, rapping slice evoked a heartfelt moan.
Susie's gleeful face appeared at the window. "She cuts like fresh-drawn butter! A Moulin Rouge skirt-tosser couldn't shake it better."
The minx grin vanished. A third stick lick resounded, echoing slightly from the main house wall.
"I wondered if those matronly drawers would earn her extra for padding," Lucretia Sue commented, her eyes on a ragged cuticle. "What's the penalty for trying to pad your hindend under correction, professor?"
"For my Chaucer students, never less than nine with the heated coulter."
"Yiiiii! . . ." Nora's fortitude audibly crumbled. "Yaow! . . . YOWWWW!" The woody strokes popped in the air.
-"Hark, something nasty thakked hire aboute the lendes weel . . . and pleyeth faste, and maketh melodie." The Georgian drawl flavored her pronunciation.
"The back of the lendes, to be proper, but otherwise, most to the point." Porter genially regarded the rugged, rangy grad student.
"Even, he kiste hire sweet and taketh his sawtrie-?" Lucretia Sue softly inquired. She paused as Nora appeared above. All eyes focused on the stone stairs.
The young woman took the steps in a near crouch, knees wavering as she planted her feet. Her hands seemed welded to her tremulous bottom. Tears roamed freely to her chin, unchecked.
Susie stood on high to watch the whole penitent progress. Then she all but skipped down to the bronze lawn seat. She licked her lips as Nora painfully straightened.