Chapter 8

Before we'd left to head over to Woolworth's we hadn't done anything with her dirty clothes. Both Morgan and I had forgotten to take them into her bath to clean them so they were just a small jumbled pile on the bed. Morgan eyed it as we returned to my room and giving a point with her right index finger asked, "Where should I put those?"

There was a short hat-shelf next to the door with a clothes pole and hangers below for hanging coats or anything that would fare better by not being folded into a drawer. Plus there were a couple of coat hooks there too. Hanging from one of them was a small canvas bag. Through the bag's wrinkles, parts of the stenciled word 'Laundry' could be seen. I picked it up and spread out the side of the bag showing her the word.

When put in Morgan's stuff I explained, "In the morning we can leave this at the front desk.

"By late afternoon, it will be back up here, all cleaned and pressed."

Morgan had laughed as I put her things into the bag and hung it back on the hook by the door. She asked if they'd really clean and press her stuff telling me only her father's work shirts ever saw a laundry and only because they needed to be pressed.

"That's all we ever could afford to send to the laundry," she said. "Mommie and I always do all the rest by hand.

"My stuff going to a laundry, That's the Cat's Meow," she told me.

That wasn't an expression I'd ever heard before and I assumed it was equal to our present day 'Cool'. Again I thought more research was due before I did much shifting into the past. There would be less questions that way and I'd be more attuned to the history of what was going on in the time period.

Then I sat on the love seat as Morgan set the Woolworth's package on the bed and untied it, extracting one of her panties. Still facing the bed she lifted up her dress to her waist, leaned over to slip her feet into the leg holes, I felt like a 'Letch'. The view from behind her, like the one I'd had in the bathtub showed all of her secret and most intimate wares.

I wasn't more than four or five feet from her and was so tempted to reach out and touch her. I yearned to just the soft skin of her butt with the tips of my fingers. A great heat was rising inside of me and was sure I was getting a rosy hue to my cheeks. And of course, that pleasant ache in the pit of my stomach returned full blast.

The impulse to reach out and touch her got even stronger as she began to slide her panties up her legs. It was if my arm wanted to rise and reach out to her of its own accord. I stifled the impulse to touch her, but it was very hard to do. I dampened the urge by reminding myself she was barely thirteen.

Plus I was embarrassed I had that type of urge toward her at all. Although I knew it wasn't too long ago that girls of an age as young as thirteen were frequently married off.

"I gather you like what you see," Morgan said to me before I realized she'd completed the task of pulling her panties up and had turned around to face me. She was still holding the front of her dress up and the panties had nestled against her nicely displaying the first 'Camel's Toe' I'd ever seen.

"Sorry," I told her as I averted my eyes from her crotch.

"It's OK," she said. "Like I told you before, I don't mind. It's not something I haven't shown a few of the boys who live in my apartment building or behind a tree in the playground at school."

Then I took in a brief but hard inward choke when she told me as she dropped her dress down and gave it a smoothing pass with her hands, "Sometimes I've let one or two of them feel me there too."

Regaining my composure I offered a soft, "Oh."

I wasn't sure what to say beyond that single acknowledgment and decided it was a good time to change the subject once more. "Well," I said, "Why don't we take that walk to see if we can leave that note for your parents."

Then with a glance at my pocket watch I added, "We have plenty of time to do that before dinner."

I still had it in my mind I'd like to meet her parents and have them to eat dinner with us. I know what she'd said earlier about that but I felt even if there was a slim chance we might catch them in their alley, it was worth it. If we tried, it might happen.