Two afternoons after my visit to the woods and the atrocious events that followed, as I have just described, I was in my room. Mr. Raleigh wished me to continue my schooling, as he put it, so he might be proud of me, and had lent me several books of history, civics, and good novels from his large library in the den. The two servant girls had been very nice to me, and I was shocked to think they had, long before he knew me, come to stay with a man who would abuse and whip them for no good reason.
Selena had been with me alone for a few minutes and I had asked her. She glanced about and whispered she wasn't really allowed to talk to me about herself or Rosa, but if I promised never to tell, she would, and of course I did. She then said that she and Rosa had been engaged by Mr. Raleigh two years ago as maids from an agency. Neither of them had any close relatives, and the wages he offered were so much higher than they could hope to get as domestics or field workers- which, I suppose because they were so pretty and had had a fair education in schools, they considered themselves above-that they decided to work for him.
Selena, not without flushing and averting her eyes a little, told me that about ten days after they had come to work for him, he found occasion to reprove her for a badly prepared dinner, and told her that in his service mistakes and disobedience were punished with a spanking. She protested, shocked at this, but he said that if she and Rosa refused to abide by his ways, they would be discharged without reference and he had his ways of seeing to it that they found it impossible to get decent work in the area. So poor Selena hesitantly agreed to accept the unusual and stringent punishment.
Each girl had a bedroom in the house. He had lived then in the city, about a hundred fifty miles away, before coming out to buy the farm next to my parents. He made Selena go to her room, bring her hairbrush, and put herself across his lap. For the first time, he explained, he was being generous by spanking her over her clothes, but the next time he would spank her on her bare skin. Selena, terribly embarrassed at this intimate and shameful situation, resolved never to incur his displeasure after this first correction, which she told me had been quite prolonged, about fifty hard spanks till she was crying and begging him to stop, swearing she would never do anything to offend him again.
A week later, it was Rosa who experienced her first spanking for having forgotten to send his best suit to the cleaners. Rosa, being older, at first tearfully and shamefacedly refused to submit to this juvenile sort of discipline, but when confronted with the alternative, at last grudgingly assented. But, sensing her rebellion, the shrewd Mr. Raleigh proposed to her that either she prepared herself-by which he meant taking down her panties and turning up her dress and slip and getting over his lap after handing him the hairbrush-or she would be discharged for insubordination. In tears, Rosa finally agreed, and, as I had done, had to hand him the hairbrush on her knees, then rise, lifting up her skirt and slip and lowering her panties to her ankles, and get across his lap for a severe hairbrush spanking of many strokes.
A week later both girls were accused of stealing. Actually Selena had borrowed a book from his library without consulting him and let Rosa read it, and he had found it in the latter's room. Confronting both that very day, they protested against the injustice of this, swearing they had really stolen nothing, but he was firm and said they would have no references and be blacklisted. Selena and Rosa, I must confess, liked their post because the wages enabled them to buy nice clothes and pretty things and live like ladies above their station. So, after a stormy scene, they agreed to submit to a spanking.
He made them go to his den, kneel on two armchairs he drew up close together, truss up skirt and slip and lower their panties, and then he used the same leather strap on their bottoms with which he had whipped me twice already so painfully. Rosa, because she was the older and more developed… there… suffered the most from his severity. To console her, that very night he forced her to yield to him as I had been made to do that first night. As for Selena, alone with him one evening when Rosa had been sent to town on several errands, she had to submit her virginity to Mr. Raleigh after one of his usual lectures on the need for a girl's obedience and her having spoken a bit flippantly that afternoon in his presence. This lovemaking was accomplished after he had made her strip stark naked for a whipping with the strap, just as in my own case.
This was a revelation to me, for I saw at once that Mr. Raleigh had a mania for spanking and whipping girls to obtain the physical satisfaction he wanted of them, and apparently he could not make love to a girl without first reddening her naked bottom. This prospect appalled me… but what choice did I have but to submit?
That evening, at dinner, Mr. Raleigh sat across the table from me while Rosa served the meal, Selena being in the kitchen to prepare it. “Tell me, my dear,” he asked calmly as he spooned his soup, “has either of the servant girls told you anything about their being with me?” I was stunned of a sudden; if I tattled on them, I foresaw it would mean a shameful and painful whipping, perhaps for both of them, whereas if I lied and he found out, as he easily could by demanding the truth from them, I would be the one to suffer his spanking wrath. My confusion must have shown in my face, for he promptly added, “I can see they have. Come now, my dear, unless you want to go across my lap right after dinner for a good long taste of the strap, you will tell me which one of them talked to you?”
“Oh, please, M-Mr. Raleigh, d-don't make me tell,” I gasped, tears springing to my eyes.
He assumed a stern expression which made me tremble. “I am going to ask you once more who it was, Lucille, my dear,” he said, raising his voice no more than if he were asking me to pass the salt, “and if you fail to answer, you shall have the hardest spanking from me you have yet received. Now then, you know how I punish disobedience. And lying or refusing to tell me the truth I consider to be the very worst faults a girl could have. Who spoke to you?”
“Oh L–Lord… I guess… Oh, I don't want to. Please! I hate to be a tattletale and have them punished.”
“It will be you or them, for certain. Come on — be careful.”
“It… it… was S-Selena, Mr. Raleigh,” I groaned, turning red with shame at my weakness and fear of him.
“Thank you for telling me, Lucille, and it's well for your pretty bottom that you did. Very good, you may go on eating, my dear, do you feel better today?”
“Y-yes… th-thank you Mr.-Mr. R-Ral-eigh,” I stammered, lowering my eyes and feeling a terrible compassion for poor Selena.
Nothing more was said till after coffee and dessert had been served and eaten. Then Mr. Raleigh, as Rosa returned to carry away the dishes, said quietly, “Rosa, will you have Selena go to her room at once? You will come with me and Miss Lucille.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, Mr. Raleigh,” Rosa gasped, her eyes widening with fear, and she hurried off to tell Selena to go to her room.
“Oh, please don't whip her because I had to tell on her. Please, Mr. Raleigh!” I begged him, putting a hand on his wrist.
“Such sympathetic emotion does you credit, my dear, except that it's misplaced. Both the girls know very well that I don't tolerate any lapse in their service. I had specifically forbidden them to tell you anything about their relations here with me, as I dare say Selena has quite fully?”