Experiences of a Country Girl

BOOK ONE
CHAPTER 1: I MEET MR. RALEIGH

I had just come from the woodshed, where I had been given a sound whipping with the strap by my dad and was rubbing my extremely sore and smarting bottom, when I saw Lester Raleigh for the first time. Later events have proved that meeting under such circumstances was very symbolic. Mr. Raleigh drove up to our farmhouse in a sport roadster, tooted his horn to attract my parents, and when they came out of the house and looked and looked at him curiously, he introduced himself. He explained that he had just bought the farm adjoining ours and was driving around getting acquainted with his neighbors. He was not at all like the sort of people we were used to, being free-spoken and quite affable, and looked to be expensive make, indicating he had money. His about thirty. He was well-dressed and his car an agreeable manner even brought my mother out of her usual reticence to talk to strangers, and she smiled and seconded Father's invitation that he remain for dinner which she was just getting ready to put on the table.

“This is our daughter, Lucille,” said Father, motioning toward me.

I didn't know whether to drop him a curtsy or extend my hand in greeting, and in confusion tried to do both at the same time. I was then eighteen years old, that complex age when a girl is trying to drop adolescent manners for adult ways. I tried to stammer some word of greeting, but I spoke incoherently and blushed furiously.

My blush caused Mr. Raleigh to smile with interest, and he commented on it in a complimentary way to my mother.

“You'll have to excuse Lucille, Mr. Raleigh,” she said. “Her paw had to take her out to the woodshed and give her a licking a while ago, and I guess she's still smarting from it.”

That remark, spoken in such a casual manner by my mother to indicate that trips to the woodshed for a whipping were not unusual for me, brought an even deeper flush to my cheeks, and caused Mr. Raleigh to look at me with renewed interest.

From the way he acted at first, I thought he was going to question me about the punishment. But he restrained himself and passed over the subject by remarking something to Mother about naughty girls needing a spanking once in a while.

During dinner, in reply to questions from Father, he laughingly admitted that he didn't know a thing about farming and had no intention of learning. He explained that he was an artist and, feeling that he would like to have a country retreat where he could get away from the noise and confusion of the city whenever he liked to go there, he had purchased the adjoining farm as a sanctuary. He willingly offered to let Father use as much of the farmland as he wished. When he left that evening, he smiled at me in a most peculiar sort of way as he pinched my cheek.

“You had better try being a good girl in the future, Lucille, so you won't be taken to the woodshed and given another spanking,” he said.

After that, he became a frequent visitor at our home, dropping in whenever he wished. Mother and Father both liked him, for he rarely came to see us without bringing a gift of some sort for Mother and tobacco and things like that for Father. But even though he brought me candy and books, I did not care for him.

There was a certain light which came into his eyes when he looked at me that made me afraid of him. What it was, I do not know, but he had that strange way of looking at me, especially when he knew I had recently been given a whipping.

From the very beginning of his visits to our place, he showed a decided interest in the fact that I was whipped by my parents. He hardly ever visited us without asking if I had been spanked lately; and once, when Mother remarked that she had just given me a taste of the switch, he asked how she had done it. Mother explained that she had taken me out to the woodshed, lifted my dress, took down my panties, and whipped my bare bottom with a hickory switch. Father, she explained, always used a strap on me.

Mr. Raleigh said he was sorry to learn I had been a naughty girl, and hoped that the whipping would do me a lot of good. But he did not speak very convincingly. In fact, he acted as though he was pleased that I had been given a smarting bottom and hoped it would happen again soon.

Since I had always been whipped by my parents, and since most of the other girls in the neighborhood I knew also got their bare bottoms whipped by their parents, including many who were much older than me, I did not think it so strange or unusual. It was embarrassing, though, because of the shameful way it was given to me, but that was all. I could not understand why there should be anything about punishment to interest anyone.

But it did interest Mr. Raleigh, and he never lost an opportunity to talk about it to my parents.

“Don't you find it rather hard to give a whipping to a girl as big as Lucille?” he asked Mother one day.

“What do you mean?” asked Mother curiously.

“Doesn't she struggle, and protest, and try to break away from you?” asked Mr. Raleigh.

“Not Lucille,” answered Mother emphatically. “And she'd better not try cutting up any such didoes as that, either. She knows that when she's got a licking coming to her, the best thing she can do is to remain still and take it. If she doesn't, I reckon her paw will get the strap and make her sing another tune pretty quick.”

Although I could not understand anyone being interested in the fact that I received a whipping when I did something my parents did not like, I did find it terribly embarrassing to hear Mother talking about it in front of me to someone who was practically a stranger to us. But Mr. Raleigh seemed to gain her confidence and get her to tell him many things about why I was whipped and how often I was given a well-tanned bottom.

Several times he threw hints to be present when I was given a whipping, but since my parents did not think it unusual for their daughter to be whipped, they did not understand the hints. Mr. Raleigh acted at times as though he wished he might be able to take me out to the woodshed and give me a whipping, but lacked the courage to ask the privilege. I honestly think that if he had asked and my parents felt I had done something to deserve it, they would have permitted him to whip me. To them a disobedient girl deserved to be whipped, and it did not matter much to them who did it as long as her bottom received a good tanning. Besides, Mr. Raleigh had made a very favorable impression on them, and they thought everything he did was above question… I believe they would have approved of him whipping me even without asking their permission…