About this deal
Normally, as you have failed to maintain the position, I should start all over again. However, as this is your first proper caning, I will waive that rule and you will receive only another four strokes. Miss Prendergast, we need some help here. Please come and hold the boy down so I can finish this without any more trouble.’ Have a look at the engravings below the newspaper cutting, of finishing schools at the time she ran hers, who knows, one of them may be her school.
You are not going to deny it was you with that boy from Tillwood, or that you were unaware such unchaperoned encounters were entirely against the rules?’ Still no response from the girl: this was typical, thought Miss Svenson.
No Headmistress. You were quite right to punish that boy. I hope now he will have learned his lesson.’ It was not a school as you know them today. It was for girls and young women, many of them over twenty. It taught music and art, as well as all the usual subjects. But it also taught deportment and manners. In other words it taught the Victorian young lady how to behave. In particular a certain type of young lady. A lawyer, in charge of his firm's dress code, uses his position to administer corporal punishment. (2,360 words.) Well, we can’t have you talking like a local can we?’ he continued, slamming his glass down on thetable.
Mummy was a perfect product of the 1950’s. A dutiful housewife who had kept an excellent house since the day she married. Sadly her husband was no longer around, but stoically, with a stiff upper lip and a gallon of fortitude, she had carried on running the house, her home, with pride. The spit in her mouth had gone, her knees went weak as she saw Mummy swell before her taking a deep breath. Her eyebrow lifted and vanished beneath her fringe. She sat down, and opened the envelope.It will be a severe punishment, Miranda, but I hope you agree a fair one. And, I can assure you, it will be administered by me. Now go and fetch thecane!’ Held over a weekend during the Winter Term, the four houses at Camsford – Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh and Grenville – would challenge each other for the honour of the Cup across six events, culminating in a cross-country ‘hare and hounds’, held on the Sunday. For this, the two leading heads of house (or, more frequently, their nominees) would act as hares, setting off in good time ahead of their pursuers. This year, Miss Svenson had not been surprised to learn that Miranda Spears, the long-legged fifth-former, had been selected as the hare forDrake. By your own admission, you have engaged in a certain amount of minor mischief during the term which has gone unnoticed or unpunished. As a result you have volunteered to receive two strokes of the cane after which the school will consider the matter over and done with. That is, of course, unless we subsequently discover something more serious in which case you know the punishment could be rather severe. Do youagree?’ She replaced the receiver and let her head rest momentarily in her hands: there was only one pupil entitled to wear orange that day, and that was the representative for Drake house – it’s hound, Miranda Spears. Another half dozen class members filed through of whom only one opted for ‘two’ and the others were allowed to leave unscathed. Then an exceptionally pretty girl with cropped blond hair entered the study, flashed a smile and greeted them enthusiastically with, ‘good morning ladies!’