From: an674112@anon.penet.fi (Rosewood)
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 20:00:28 UTC
Subject: EMMA AT SCHOOL Episode 2 - A Sight For Sore....
Four days after her first ever spanking, Emma was being driven to Katherine Parr School for Girls. She hadn’t had to set foot in her old school again. She hadn’t had to run the gauntlet of her friends’ accusing glances - or face Steven. As they passed it by on that dull Monday morning, Emma gave it only a cursory glance - she was moving on.
She had managed to survive without the humiliation of any further bare bottom spankings from her dad; in fact, she had amazed her parents and herself with her immaculate behaviour since that first embarrassing occasion which she endured, knickers round her ankles, over her father’s knee. Now there was just the case of Katherine Parr’s infamous corporal punishment regime. In the 1990s, what with the Children’s Act and everything, what leeway did schools have in the realm of physical discipline?
This and other more mundane thoughts occupied her mind until, after an hour’s drive, her father turned the car onto the crispy gravel drive of Bronte House. Emma peered out of the window. The building didn’t look as austere as she had expected. There were curtains in the windows upstairs (what she rightly assumed must be dormitories) and the large downstairs rooms, despite their size, had a look of warmth about them. Emma’s anxiety began to diminish a little.
She felt more relaxed still when the housemaster, Mr Lindon, answered the door. He had a kindly face and Emma took to him at once, bubbling over enthusiastically when he asked her questions about her tastes and hobbies. "Well," the teacher said after a while, "Let’s get you settled shall we while I chat to your mum and dad? Say your goodbyes and then follow me." Keeping inside the tears she could feel pricking at her eyes, Emma kissed her mum and dad, remembering her sore bottom of a few days ago when her dad whispered to her, "Be good!"
"I will," she promised him, turning then to follow her housemaster. "Right, then," he said as they marched briskly through his private section of the house. "Let me introduce you to my study."
Emma thought that a slightly curious thing to say, but then she expected a little linguistic eccentricity from public school and simple trotted along after him and followed him through a big oak doorway. This, obviously, was his study. It was a medium sized, beautifully decorated room with pot plants and paintings scattered liberally around its many nooks and crannies. The large mahogany desk took up a huge amount of room, but helped to make the study feel warm and comfortable. Here and there were small models of vintage cars, and the walls were literally covered with books.
Emma, however, saw nothing of this. She saw only what was placed in the middle of the room. It was a construction made of black steel tubing and green padding which Emma might have mistaken for an exercise apparatus of some kind if only its function was not being so unambiguously demonstrated by the young girl strapped to it.
Although she couldn’t see her face, Emma guessed the girl to be about her age. Her face was hidden from Emma’s line of sight because she was bent over double away from the new pupil, grasping a bar at the other side of the contraption to which her wrists were fastened by velcro straps. She was kneeling on two padded rests which effectively forced her to maintain a position with her thighs permanently spread, and her lower thighs too were secured in place.
This information alone would have been sufficient to tell any onlooker that the construction was designed to assist in the punishment of naughty pupils. However, none of these details were part of what first struck Emma dumb as she entered the room. What did strike her were three things. Firstly, that the girl bent over before her had her skirt up round her waist and her knickers neatly deposited on the floor, thus exposing her bare bottom and, due to the position of her knees, her youthful pussy. Secondly, that her bare bottom was adorned with five very angry looking, and clearly recently established, weals. And thirdly, that the weals in question had almost certainly been originated by the terrifying, four foot rattan cane lying impatiently on Mr Lindon’s desk.
"How many more, Deborah?" the housemaster asked, not unkindly.
"One," the girl sobbed.
"Good," Mr Lindon said absent-mindedly. "I’ll be back to finish you off after I’ve said goodbye to Emma’s parents. No talking please, either of you."
Neither girl, given the situation, needed this final injunction to silence and, once the housemaster had left the room, Emma’s mind finally began to draw some unpalatable conclusions from the scene before her. There were few options: either this was Mr Lindon’s own daughter (or a pupil who was "special" in some other way), or her predicament represented at least one point on the scale of punishments to which Emma’s parents were now proposing to subject her. The latter was, she knew, the more likely as well as the more frightening, and she suddenly noticed that her hands had begun to shake.
She could hear the muted voices of Mr Lindon and her parents from down the corridor and wondered whether her parents would take her home if she told them of what was happening here in this room... but she knew inside that they would wholeheartedly approve. This was to be her fate. She inched closer to the bound girl. As her eyes roamed shamelessly over the victim’s pale, but vividly striped, bottom and then dipped, uninvited, between her thighs she became aware of a dampness beneath her own cotton panties and flushed, glad that the girl could not see her face. She was bewitched by the completeness of the girl’s submission, sex and bottom simultaneously offered up, her bonds making impossible any resistance. Emma wanted to reach out her hand and run her fingers along the moist, silky slit provocatively presented to her, but instead she slipped her fingers under her own skirt and negotiated a passage inside her panties and then into her own wetness.
She heard Mr Lindon’s footsteps just before he entered the room and pulled her hand from between her legs quickly, blushing heavily once again and hoping he hadn’t seen. There was no way of telling from his impassive expression whether he had or not and Emma avoided his gaze and looked at the by now quite familiar bottom which, she knew, was now to receive the delayed climax of its punishment.
She looked on with a horrified fascination as Mr Lindon picked up the cane and then walked over to the girl, reaching down to offer her teeth something to bite down on before taking up his position. He stood to the left of her, the cane resting gently across both cheeks and seeking an unmarked area of flesh. Once satisfied, he widened his stance to better balance himself and then raised the cane slowly up into the air in a long arc.
Emma imagined herself now in the girl’s place, bottom naked and vulnerable, sex parted and shamefully hot and moist. She watched as Mr Lindon’s cane began the sweep down through the air, accelerating rapidly towards its target and creating a terrifying swishing sound as it gathered momentum and then suddenly....
THWACKKK! It struck! The girl’s body jerked under the force of the blow and she bit on her scream, turning it into a agonized grunt as a new welt grew almost magically under the cruel caress of the rod. Mr Lindon turned and replaced the cane on his desk and then, leaving the punished girl in place for the time being, addressed Emma in a level voice. "Well now, Emma. Deborah here will look after you for the first week or so of your stay while you get to learn how we do things. Your parents have told me the reasons they’ve sent you here, perhaps you’d like to tell me yourself as well.
Emma felt awkward speaking in front of the half naked Deborah, and part whispered her reply.
"I... I was going out with this boy who they didn’t approve of and I started getting into trouble... like not getting in on time and stuff and my dad said I needed somewhere with more discipline..."
At this, picturing herself once more under the housemaster’s cane, she began to weep and Mr Lindon’s voice softened a little.
"And corporal punishment has never been part of your discipline at home?"
"Not... not before last week," Emma replied.
"What happened last week?"
"My dad... my dad spanked me," she answered.
"For the first time," the man completed her sentence. "How?"
"He... he made me take off my jeans and then he... pulled down my panties and put me over his knee. And then he spanked my bare bottom.
"With his hand?" Emma nodded in reply.
"How many?"
"Twenty."
Mr Lindon nodded his approval and then, rather than telling her about his school’s regime he moved to unfasten Deborah’s ties, helping her to her feet. Emma watched as the other girl slipped her panties back on, wincing a little as they rubbed against her raw markings and flushing all the time at the thought of what the new girl had just witnessed.
"Take Emma along to your study won’t you, Deborah," he told her. "You can both sleep in the guest room this week while Emma’s finding her feet." Deborah nodded, tears still trickling one by one down her cheeks, and then smiled briefly at Emma and led her from the room silently.
Neither girl spoke until they reached Deborah’s study which, by means of its tidiness and the posters and decorations on the walls, imparted a great deal of information to the new girl about her fellow pupil’s tastes and character.
"I’m sorry I had to see you being punished," Emma ventured meekly.
"Me too!" Deborah snapped. Then, seeing the hurt expression on Emma’s face, she relented. "Hey, I’m sorry," she said more gently. "I’m not angry with you - it’s not as if you had any choice. Come on, let’s get you unpacked."
As the girls made their way to the store room where Emma’s cases had been parked temporarily, Emma tried to get some information out of her new friend about the punishment regime.
"So, does Mr Lindon often cane the girls here?" she asked. Deborah stopped and turned towards the other girl, placing her hands warmly on her shoulders.
"Look, I’m sorry," she began, "but I’m not allowed to discuss any of the rules and punishments with you until you pass your House Test. I’ve got a rule book for you which will tell you most things, but I’ll get into real trouble if anyone finds out I’ve spoken to you about punishment before you’ve passed."
She went on to explain what House Tests were. Basically, each new girl had to learn the school rule book inside out and be able to answer questions from the house captain at the end of her first week. She had to get every single question right to pass. Up until then, she was only allowed out of her study for chapel, meals, lessons and bed. Once she had passed, she would become a full member of house - and be assigned a sixth former to "fag" for. Emma had thought that fagging had only happened in boys’ public schools - and that it had died out now anyway. It seemed that Katherine Parr was a school in a time warp!
After tea (Emma was surprised to find that the food served at the school was really good - plenty of vegetarian choices) Deborah left her alone with the rule book and told her that she was allowed to answer questions about what rules meant if she was unclear - but that was all. Emma got comfortable and began to read. Her comfort was short lived....
RULES 1. GENERAL These rules are to be strictly adhered to by all students. Punishment for rule breaking will on all occasions include corporal punishment, though additional sanctions may be applied as warranted by each particular case. Throughout these rules, a pupil who is to be punished shall be called the offender, and the pupil or teacher who gives the punishment shall be called the administrator. The rules set out, for each offence, minimum and maximum punishments which should be strictly adhered to except where extensions are provided for in section 4 of these rules. Where a punishment is of a greater severity than the maximum permitted to any particular administrator, the punishment shall be referred to the appropriate authority at the necessary level. All punishments shall be administered to the bottom. 2. HIERARCHIES (in descending order) 2a. Implements (abbreviations) Birch (B) Cane (C) Tawse (T) Paddle (P) Hairbrush (H) Slipper (S) Ruler (R) Hand (X) 2b. Clothing (abbreviations) Bare bottom (b) Panties only (p) One layer of clothing (1) Fully clothed (f) 2c. Administrators (max punishment) Headmaster (24Bb) Housemaster/mistress (12Cb) House captain (12Tb) House tutor (20Pb) Class teacher (40Pp) School prefect (9Tb) House prefect (15H1) Dormitory monitor (6Sb) General monitor (18Rf) Note: max no of strokes doubled for each movement down the implement or clothing hierarchies (eg max punishment for School prefect is equivalent to 36Pp). Administrators may not use implement or clothing levels above that given as their maximum. 3. GUIDELINES FOR ADMINISTRATION 3a. Privacy Bare bottom punishment should always be conducted in private, except where: - there are a number of co-offenders, in which case they may be punished together - there is an identifiable victim of the offence, in which case they may observe the punishment - it is decided (at house captain level or higher) that by conducting the punishment in public, other potential offenders may be deterred from similar offences - it is decided (at housemaster/mistress level or higher) that it is otherwise appropriate for the punishment to be observed by a third party - the offender’s guardians have requested the medical officer’s presence - the offender’s guardians have requested that the punishment be administered in public 3b. Method There are no specific requirements for the method of administration. In general: - offenders should be afforded a basic level of dignity - punishments should not be conducted in cruel or obscene ways - the duration of punishments should not be unreasonably extended 3c. Information to guardians Guardians shall be notified of all punishments at the level of 6Cb or higher in advance of administration. Guardians may require: - a medical officer to be present - a medical inspection to be made before and after the punishment - a phone conversation with the offender prior to administration In the event of a 3Bb punishment (or higher), the above conditions are mandatory. 3d. Appeals Offenders may appeal against a punishment AFTER its administration. If the appeal is successful, double the equivalent punishment shall be voided in lieu at the next offence. If the appeal is unsuccessful, the punishment shall be repeated. 4. EXTENSIONS 4a. Refusal Offenders who refuse to accept punishment shall, following one reminder of the appeals procedure, be liable to doubling of strokes, implements or clothing level for each refusal. Administrators shall refer punishments upwards if such doubling takes the punishment beyond their maximum. 4b. Denial Where an offender denies an offence, following one reminder of the appeals procedure, their punishment shall be preceded by 6Xb (or 6Xp, 6X1 or 6Xf where this is the limit of the administrator’s powers). This additional punishment shall be repeated as necessary until the offender agrees to accept the original punishment. 4c. Physical or verbal aggression Where an offender becomes physically or verbally aggressive or abusive, the doubling procedure outlined in 4a shall be invoked. 4d. Three strikes and out Following the third punishment for an identical offence within a three week period, an offender shall be referred upwards to the necessary level and receive an additional punishment of 12 strokes at two implement levels and one clothing level higher than the punishment administered for the offence itself. 5. RULES (min-max punishment) 5a. General conduct Pupils shall not bring the school into disrepute (3Tp-6Bb) Pupils shall wear correct uniform (3Sp-2Cb) Pupils shall be polite and obedient towards teachers (6X1-6Cb) Pupils shall be polite to other pupils (6X1-3Cb) 5b. Lessons and work Pupils shall attend all lessons on their timetable (3Pb-6Cb) Pupils shall behave sensibly and appropriately throughout lessons (6Pp-6Cb) Pupils shall complete all assignments on time (3Pp-12Pb) Pupils shall work hard throughout lessons (3Pf-20Pp) Pupils shall comply with all instructions given by their teacher (3Pf-20Pb)
... by this time Emma was lying on the couch in Deborah’s study with tears flowing down her cheeks so quickly that she could no longer read the close-typed text. There were pages more of similar rules, creating a web of directions in which no girl could hope, surely, to remain unentangled. Emma would have thought the book a practical joke if she hadn’t already witnessed her room-mate receiving the last of six strokes of the cane on the bare bottom earlier that day. Now, as she read through the rules, the sense of apprehension that had stalked her then grew into a towering monster. She remembered her father’s recent spanking of her and realised now that it had been nothing in comparison to what she could expect here! She resolved, as every girl did on their arrival at Katherine Parr, to be a model pupil.
Suddenly the door burst open and Deborah came flouncing through, red in the face and swearing copiously. She ignored Emma completely and threw herself onto the room’s other couch on her front.
Emma guessed at the probable source of her friend’s distress and got up to approach her, caressing Deborah’s hair gently.
"What happened?" she asked quietly.
"I’m not allowed to tell you!" the tearful girl snapped. "You know that!" Emma ignored this unwarranted outburst and continued to stroke Deborah’s hair.
"Can’t you just leave me alone? It’s not there it hurts!"
Deborah regretted her harsh words immediately, her tears flowing faster as her comforter got up and walked off.
"I’m sorry," she whined. "Emma, really...."
"That’s OK," Emma answered without a trace of a rebuke. "You’re quite right."
"About what?"
"That you’re not allowed to tell me what happened and that it’s not your head that hurts." She smiled. "I have a solution."
"What?" Deborah murmured, closing her eyes once more as Emma returned and hoping that she’d continue her tender caresses. What solution? she asked herself dozily, the pain in her recently paddled bottom making continued rational thought impossible. When she sensed her skirt being raised, at first she imagined that she was back in her house tutor’s room, bent over his knee. Then she realised that it was Emma by her side, exposing her panties and lifted her head.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
"Just you lie still," Emma told her sternly, pushing her room-mates head back down and finding, to her pleasure, that Deborah allowed herself to be thus placated.
When, next, Emma took hold of Deborah’s panties and pulled them steadily down her legs and off her ankles, Deborah lay still, still in the mode of accepting obedience required during punishments in the school. Her fuzzy brain hoped only that Emma wasn’t going to spank her, not recognising the unlikelihood of that.
"I’ve got this herbal cream," Emma explained now, rubbing a small quantity of the cold, white preparation on her palms. "It’s brilliant for any external injury, like nettles and bruises and stuff. I can’t see why it shouldn’t work on your bottom."
She looked down now at Deborah’s cheeks. The six welts given to her by Mr Lindon were still very much in evidence, but they were now swimming in a vivid sea of red which covered her whole bottom. She wondered if Deborah would talk just a little in her woozy condition.
"Paddle or slipper?" she asked nonchalantly.
"Paddle," Deborah admitted sleepily. "Ten whacks for not getting my homework done for Miss Pearson again. Bitch!"
"Careful what you say!" Emma warned her with a smile. "You don’t know who might be listening!"
With that, she began to smooth the ointment into Deborah’s sore behind, the girl wincing at first under her fingers, but then moaning with relief as the remedy began to have its effect. As she rubbed, Emma delighted in the feel of her friend’s cheeks. She had only ever fancied boys - she thought - but their bottoms were horrible. Either too fat or too thin, too hairy or too pale.... But this, this olive-coloured peach-shaped bottom was perfect; the skin smooth to the touch, responsive under the fingers. "Ouch!" Emma caught a weal with her finger-nail and apologised profusely. Instinctively she bent down to kiss the injured part tenderly, being rewarded by a muted gasp from the girl beneath her. She began to kiss each of the red stripes laced across Deborah’s bottom and, as she did so, she was aware of a creeping heat between her own thighs. She moved her face close to the place where Deborah’s pussy lay hidden between her closed legs and smelt what she knew was female arousal. As she continued to kiss and caress her friend’s bare bottom, Emma allowed one of her hands to slip between her own thighs and find her pussy, rubbing hard at her clitoris and closing her eyes.
As she neared orgasm, Emma stopped working on Deborah’s body and Deborah remained silent as she felt the couch move slightly in rhythm to her friend’s masturbation and heard the shallow gasps Emma made as she approached her climax. As she heard the other girl coming, Deborah crushed her pussy down on the couch, relieving just a little of her own tension, but wishing she had the courage to ask Emma to touch her pussy and make love to her. Like Emma, she considered herself to be straight - but unlike her she had had several relationships with other girls - all at school - and was enchanted, rather than disgusted, at Emma’s obvious desire for her. Emma had been taken by surprise by her sudden lust and, having come just once, she removed her hand from her knickers and continued to massage the cream into her friend’s bottom, as if pretending that nothing had happened. During Emma’s first week at school, she neither received a spanking herself nor, apart from the caning she witnessed on her very first day, did she see one being administered. She suspected, correctly, that this was by design - as if spanking her would admit her to the world of Katherine Parr before she had passed her Test.
She crammed for it constantly; not being allowed out of the study she shared with Deborah, it was fairly easy to avoid distraction. Her isolation was completed by an injunction against other pupils entering Deborah’s study during Emma’s period of purdah.
She did have some contact with the school’s corporal punishment regime though. Either Deborah was one of those kids who gets into trouble a lot, or punishments really were dished out left, right and centre. Emma’s room-mate would roll in once, twice - sometimes three times a day, clutching her bottom with a tear-streaked face. When she did so, Emma would pick up her herbal cream and begin to smear the sweet smelling mixture over her hands while Deborah slipped off her panties and lay on the couch ready to have her spanking soothed. Emma tried each time to gauge what punishment her friend had received, although Deborah no longer confirmed her guesses. Strappings and canings were the easiest to spot because of the distinctive stripes left by their beatings and Emma was grateful to find that these were relative rarities. Often, though, the only clue available was the vividness of the redness left by the administrator.
As the days passed, Deborah began to adopt a different posture for Emma’s caresses. Claiming that the cream worked better when her skin was taut, she now knelt up on the bed with her bare bottom up in the air - just as if she were waiting for a spanking. Emma continued to keep the lid on the sexual part of her reaction to Deborah’s flirtation, never refusing to get out the cream and never failing to become wet as she smoothed her hands over her friend’s ready-warmed bottom, but never either letting her hands stray between Deborah’s thighs.
On Saturday, the day before Emma’s test, Deborah came back from a particularly heavy afternoon in floods of tears. She hadn’t been caned (Emma’s first thought) but had received a bare-bottom hand-spanking from a boy who was now a school prefect, but who had the previous year been Deborah’s boyfriend. She had been really upset when he had dropped her and she still really fancied him.
Emma didn’t even know that there were any boys in the school and Deborah explained that teachers’ sons were allowed to attend and there were usually about two or three in each year at the school. They were given no special treatment and their presence did lead to some embarrassment for both boys and girls, given the punishment regime of the school. When boys deserved, in the sixth form, to be made prefects, they were - and were trusted not to abuse their right to remove girls’ panties.
Today this particular prefect, Robbie, had caught Deborah skipping class and, despite her pleas to refer her, he had insisted on administering her punishment himself. He had also refused to listen to her entreaty not to bare her bottom because of their previous involvement.
"Don’t be ridiculous," he chided her. "First of all, you can’t expect prefects to give their ex-girlfriends special treatment, and secondly, unlike most girls I spank, I’ve already seen your bare bottom haven’t I?"
"Yes, I know, but..." Deborah began.
"No buts! Come on, come to my study or I’ll spank you out here on the lawn."
Deborah slouched along after this boy whom she still lusted after, who no longer wanted her, but who was now about to give her a bare bottom spanking. When they got to his study, Robbie sat down and contemplated his task.
"Of course, you should get an extension for your protests," he said.
"However, I understand your reasons, so I shall simply adapt the punishment to persuade you of my determination to carry out my duties properly. You will strip to your panties, please!"
"No!!" Deborah screeched.
The prefect jumped to his feet, took her face in his hands and spoke quietly.
"If you make one more refusal, I shall double up twice and you’ll be getting the tawse across your bare bottom. Now do as you’re told!" Crying steadily, Deborah started to remove her clothing, remembering the times she had gladly taken off her clothes for this boy and welcomed his fingers between her thighs. These memories flooded not only her mind but also her pussy and she knew she was getting wet enough for Robbie to see her arousal if she didn’t keep her legs pressed tightly together. Robbie’s face was appreciative, rather than impassive, as Deborah unfastened her bra and slowly exposed her breasts. She found herself flushing with a humiliating pleasure that he still seemed to find her attractive, mixed with embarrassment at her hardened nipples: pert teats that Robbie’s lips had often surrounded.
When she finally stood naked before him, except for her skimpy panties, Robbie beckoned her to him and ran his hands gently up her legs to the crotch of her remaining garment. Then, without actually touching her pussy, he took hold of the strip of cotton which passed between her legs and tugged downwards. Inch by inch, Robbie uncovered Deborah’s triangle of blond hair and then continued his task until the girl’s panties fell uselessly to the floor around her ankles. Then he took her hand and she stepped out of her knickers and allowed her ex- boyfriend to take her over his knee.
When his hand began to stroke her bare bottom, Deborah was unable to hold in a moan of sensual pleasure and she closed her eyes and scolded herself harshly as his hand travelled down to the top of her thighs, applying the gentlest of outward pressure, and Deborah responded, despite her earlier resolution, by parting her thighs until her soaking pussy was on full view. Only then, when Robbie had demonstrated his total command of her, did the boy begin to punish her for skipping class. A full thirty-six hard smacks, covering every square inch of her cheeks and moving down to spank the back of her thighs towards the end of the punishment. Deborah howled and cried, and indeed the spanking was a fierce one, but the greatest pain was that this boy, who no longer wished to make love with her, was happy to use his power to strip and spank her.
Once he had finished, Robbie made her stand, still naked, in front of him for a final reproach.
"Before you go, you will thank me for punishing you," he told her. Any rebelliousness in her had been suppressed by the weight of his hand on her naked bottom and she replied meekly.
"Thank you for spanking my bare bottom," she said. "I should not have skipped class and I deserved to be punished."
"You certainly did. And be warned that I shall be keeping a very careful eye on you, young lady, over the next term. If you put a foot wrong, you can be certain I shall have you in here with your knickers off and over my knee. And it will be the strap you’ll be feeling next time! Dismissed!" Deborah had run back over the grounds to her own house and down the corridor to her study, falling into Emma’s warm embrace and, breaking the rule for once, telling her friend about everything that had happened. Emma had responded by taking Deborah, bare bottomed, over her knee herself, but to soothe rather than spank her, rubbing the cream into her sore flesh with a deep sensuality and listening with delight to the moans and sighs of the girl beneath her hands.
On Sunday morning, Deborah kissed Emma tenderly and sent her off down the corridor to the house captain’s study.
"Good luck!" she said. "You show them!"
"I’ll try," Emma replied with a rather forced grin, before walking slowly down the corridor to the blue door at the far end that led to Amanda’s study.
"Come! Ah... Emma, isn’t it? Good. Sit down here and we’ll begin at once. Ready?"
Amanda was a tall, imposing eighteen year old who would have kept the members of her house on a tight rein even if she hadn’t been given the power to upend and spank them. As is was, no girl failed to give her the respect she demanded. In the room with the house captain were five other sixth-formers, all prefects. They sometimes asked the odd question, but principally the House Test was Amanda’s responsibility.
"I... I think so."
"Fine. What can you get an extension for?"
"Er," Emma’s mind went blank for a moment and she thought she was going to remember nothing. Then the words flashed into her head. "Refusal, denial, physical or verbal aggression, or three offences in three weeks."
"OK. What is the punishment for smoking?"
"A minimum of six strokes with the tawse on the bare bottom and a maximum of twelve strokes of the cane."
"Mm, hm. What is the maximum punishment a house tutor can give?"
"Twenty strokes of the paddle on the bare bottom."
The questions went on for fifteen minutes, the answers coming easily to Emma as her confidence built up. Then, as she sensed the test was coming to an end....
"How is a house public conducted?"
"A... a what?"
Emma knew that her response had made it impossible even for her to bluff now, but she knew she hadn’t even read those words. She could see the interest of the prefects, sitting behind their leader, growing.
"A house public. Come on, it’s in the appendix."
"Appendix? What appendix?"
Amanda, who had been smiling up until now, began to frown.
"The appendix at the back of the rule book. The last two pages."
"I... I..." tears were beginning to well up in her now. She had seen the appendix - she remembered now - but for some reason she hadn’t thought it was part of the rules. Why hadn’t she asked? She began to get desperate. "I didn’t know... I... can I have an extra day...?"
"You can have an extra three days," Amanda said. "You have failed I’m afraid, so you’re still on restricted movement. You’ll come back here at eight o’clock on Wednesday morning. And I would suggest you make sure you get every question right."
"I will. I promise. Can I go now?"
"Not yet, I’m afraid. There is something else I must attend to first. Stand up, please."
Emma stood shakily and watched as the house captain walked over to her desk and pressed a large red button on the wall. Then she opened a drawer and, to Emma’s horror, took from it a long, stiff leather strap. She walked back over to where the younger girl was standing and held it so that Emma could see it clearly. It was some eighteen inches long and about two inches wide, dark brown in colour, and was cut into fingers at one end. The other end was bound into a short handle.
"Do you know what this is?" Amanda asked her sternly.
"Y... yes. It... it’s a tawse," she whispered.
"And what is it for?"
"For..." she was weeping heavily now. "For giving punishments."
"Yes. For giving punishments. For spanking the bare bottoms of naughty young girls. And, as you will find, it is extremely effective. Kneel down please."