Anonymous - The simple tale of Susan Aked

My room was lighted by one high window, and on one side of this window was the press in which I hung my clothes. It had a broad door, and that door was a large mirror, fully six feet high. I was a girl of nature. Had I ever bathed near this mirror I should have often seen myself naked reflected in it, but as a matter of fact, it never struck me that it was worthwhile to take the trouble to walk from the corner of my room, where my bath was always placed for me, to look at my naked charms in this glass. I used it occasionally when I dressed with extra care to go to church, or to go into Worcester, or to Malvern, but I was not much given to admire myself in any glass.

I had no idea that I was beautiful, and I did not care for my face. But Lucia, who was very artistic in her taste and no mean hand with brush and pencil, at once saw an opportunity for a pretty picture. She drew the curtains of the window so as to form only a broad chink, through which light enough would shine to illumine any object near the window, but not so much as to cause any powerful reflections from the walls, and then placed herself and me, side by side opposite the mirror. I was delighted. I had never seen anything so perfectly lovely as we looked in that glass. Two naked nymphs with the most graceful forms, glowing with life, showing all that makes beauty most bewitching; rosy cheeks, cherry lips, glistening eyes, necks and arms, thighs of polished marble, breasts looking each a little askance tipped with rosy nipples, skins as pure as snow but lighted with the faintest rosy tints, as of light reflected from a dying sunset sky, and forms which shone out against the dark background, sharp, yet soft lined, and clear as the light of day. Oh, what a mistake artists make in failing to ornament the soft, rising triangle beneath the curve of their beauties' bellies, with the dark curling hair that Nature has provided, surely to enhance the lovely slope which leads to the entrance of the Temple of Love. The contrast afforded by this dark, bushy little hill, and the surrounding white plain of the belly, or the snowiness of the round, voluptuous thighs is really exquisite. And why do painters and sculptors neglect the soft, inturning folds, which form that deep, quiet-looking line, that retreats into the depths between the thighs, half hidden by the curling locks, but plain in nature, and to deprive woman of which would take from her her very essence? They don't do it to men. I have seen statues and pictures in which all that a man has, prick, balls, bush, are represented with striking fidelity, if partly idealised: why then should it be indecent to picture woman's most powerful charm? It cannot surely be said that what men most prize in her is too ugly to be drawn or moulded. Lucia was wild over her lovely picture, as she called it. She put herself and me into various attitudes and admired, as indeed did I, all that the faithful glass reflected. I could not help noticing, however, that her form showed greater maturity than mine, but she told me that there were few girls of my age who could compare with me in that quality, and that in a very short time, some few months, my shoulders and hips and limbs would be as round as hers.

'As for your bosom, Susan, I would not wish to see it one atom more developed. I should like you to keep these exquisite little bubbies just as they are. Let them grow just a trifle firmer perhaps, but not one atom larger. See! A man's head could hardly completely cover one. They have just sufficient prominence to fulfil the law of beauty, and they look so imploringly at one as though to say “Please squeeze me! Please kiss me!” Your motte I should like to see just a trifle more plump. Another quarter of an inch rise would do it no harm, and be more agreeable for a man to feel when he drives home the last inch, or squeezes in the last line after the short digs.'

'I am beginning to understand,' said I, 'but Lucia, now you have the opportunity, and no one is near, tell me all about a man, and what it is he does to one. What are short digs?'

'I'll sleep with you tonight, my pet,' she said, kissing me, 'but I shall have so much to tell that I won't spoil the fun by beginning now. Besides, when once I get on that topic I shall get so wild, I know that nothing but my copious and repeated spending will relieve me, or you either,' said she, archly laughing and stroking my cunnie most delightfully. 'Now,' she added, 'come, dress, and put on my stays, and I'll put on yours, and we will go and exhibit ourselves to Mrs. Warmart.'

Lucia made me put on her stays and dress and she herself put on mine. We were much of the same height and build, only, as I have said before, she was everywhere a little fuller, more rounded, so to say, than I. Both she and I were surprised to find that her dress was not in the least too full in the bosom for me, and it was not simply the stays which made the fit apparently correct, for my own bubbies quite filled up the bags in them; in fact, had they been made for me, her stays could not have fitted better. But it was different with her when she put on mine. Her poor, darling, lovely bubbies were simply squashed out flat, and yet she could hardly get my dress to fasten over her bosom.

'Oh,' she cried, 'the brutal instrument of torture! I will wear it for a few minutes just to show Martha, but no longer. After that, Susan, my dear, we will change again. I wonder how you could have endured such a strait-jacket as this, or how on earth your bubbies ever came to be so sweetly round and pointed as they really are. Mine are crushed!' Then, looking me over, she exclaimed at the beauty of my figure, which was now shown off, she said, to perfection, and had a chance of appearing at last as it should. We ran downstairs to Martha, who, busy at some household work, looked up and mistook me for Lucia.

Lucia was delighted.

'Ah! Susan, I told you so. Now look, Mrs. Warmart, I am not going to let Susan wear those abominable stays any longer. I know I have a good figure, yet just look at me! Did you ever see such a lout of a girl as I look! Positively you would never think I had any breasts at all, and I declare I hardly thought Susan had any either. Yet see! Just feel the lovely little ducks! Firm, round, elastic; such a pair of pretty doves with little rosy bills! It is downright shameful to crush them in such a wooden box of a corset as this. I know my breast is actually hurt under it.'

'Well, you see, miss, it was all her ma's wish. She never liked Miss Susan to look grown up and developed,'

'But why? Why on earth? Anyone could see that she must be quite ripe. Look at her hips.'

Ah, well! She had a good reason, my dear young lady.'

'Perhaps she had, and perhaps she had as good a reason why poor Susan should be condemned to wear drawers which must be exceedingly incommodious at certain times, to say the least of it!'

'Well, yes, miss. There was the same reason for that too. I hardly like to say before Miss Susan, because she is innocent like. Yet she ought to know to be on her guard.'

'Well, Martha, since Susan is quite old enough to know what is what, you might tell us the grand reason.'

'Well, miss, when Master Charlie Althair lived at The Broads, people said that there were not two greater pests than him and Jack Cocklade, who lived in Leigh. I do believe Master Charlie got credit for doing more than he did, but all the people complained that no sooner did their daughters get fledged than either he or Jack would be into them, and that ripe maidenheads could not be found, high or low! What Master Charlie did not pluck, Jack did. No one ever brought an affiliation case against Master Charlie, but Jack is known to be father of ever so many love children. Poor Miss Mary Essex was raped by one or other of 'em in her own father's field, not half a mile from home. I believe that it was Jack who did it, but there was a great noise a little time after when she and Master Charlie were caught hard at it by Mr Essex in one of his barns. They were caught in the very act, and it was that which caused Mrs. Althair, who had no idea until then what a lively lad he was, to go away from The Broads. I believe she had to pay up handsomely for that little spree of her son's, and being a very strict and straight lady, she could not face the people after her disgrace, as she called it. Jack, indeed, got imprisoned for his share, because Miss Mary Essex confessed he had had her before Master Charlie and against her will; but Master Charlie was let off pretty easy because she had to admit that she did love being had by him. This happened some five or six years ago, and poor Mrs. Aked got such a shock she wouldn't let Miss Susan out by herself, nor allow her to have her drawers divided at all. But poor Miss Susan complained she could not do her jobs easy when she had to unbutton her drawers behind, so she had them cut as you find them now.'