Chapter 11: Shrimp Migration

She can see the Headmaster droning on to the girls in the Assembly Hall. If she could, she’d sneak inside, in at the back, and no-one would know different. But she can’t. She badly, badly needs the loo. She’s been so stressed on her way into school, holding it in, praying she’ll get there. Shella Tanty doesn’t know what she’s eaten, but whatever it is has rattled her guts.

She has hurried in, feet shuffling, through the gates, through the main entrance lobby between the assembly hall and the big teaching block and straight back out the other side onto the empty playground. It’s cheeks together in an iron clamp now as she takes quick, mincing steps towards the long girls’ outside toilet block. She gets through its entrance. Scrapes tight feet into a cubicle and turns. A second later would have been too late, as she rips down her knickers and bumps down on the seat.

The stuff explodes out of her in a bomb of gas and matter. And it’s over in moments. She sits there anyway, relieved but feeling gutsy, smelling the horrible mix below. But she can feel it. She’s empty. Time to clean up.

Except, when she’s got her spattered skin dry and clean and she finally stands to flush the pan, her bum feels suddenly wet again. Her head and neck strain to look behind her. She can’t believe it. Her stupid orange skirt is just so short - how can it have got caught up in the event? Splash back? She shudders. Kicking her knickers fully off, she takes off the short flared skirt, trying to keep it away from her legs.

They’re still in Assembly. She’s got no choice, but she does have a brief window. She darts to the sinks and stuffs the wet patch of her skirt under a tap. Tries to scrub it clean, urgently, just using her hands. It’s just water from the pan, splashing back out, she gets it now.

Tanty quickly washes her bum cheeks clean - between them, too. She doesn’t care if water splashes on the floor - then dries herself off with two big paper towels. She pulls her white knickers back on, up around her hips. Thankfully, those are clean and dry. She goes at her skirt again. It’s clean now, for sure, but it’s wet as well.

A hand drier is the only option. Conscious of the time ticking past, she holds the wet parts of her skirt directly underneath, trying to dry them as quickly as she can. It won’t get dry though! How long has this taken?

Pretty soon, she hears girls. Not coming out onto the playground, but their voices are unmistakable as they move from the assembly hall, through the lobby to the classrooms. And her skirt is still wet! She tries another dryer but it’s just as slow.

A bell rings. That’s the start of classes.

Shella Tanty is Mr Chorlo Needan’s second pick for an orange skirt. But unlike Imenna Scutta, he has never tried to touch her. Tanty knows - they all do in her class - that their new-in-this-term teacher Mr Needan is scared of Mrs Locus - his older, more experienced assistant teacher. Shella’s skirt just hasn’t been a problem till now, not even on the playground, because Mrs Locus has tried to give her tasks and chores in all of the breaks. Helping her to fetch supplies. Keeping her close, protecting her.

Locus hasn’t done the same for Imenna Scutta. She knows her reputation. Girls whisper her nickname behind her back: Slutter Scutta. She’s famous on BaseGirlies, Tanty hears. It had gone around the class in a scandalised whisper. “Needan’s doing Slutter Scutta after school!” And yes, apparently there are records on the Database.

This is more than he’s been doing in class, despite the new rules, which they’ve only really heard of from other girls at school.

“I hope you don’t mind, Tanty. You won’t be with your friends. But you will be safe, even if it makes your school days seem longer. As that alright with you?”

Mrs Locus is quite a severe-looking woman. In her fifties, a spinster, she could probably teach the real teachers how to teach, but all she can be is an assistant, forever. Tanty misses hanging out with the other girls outside, but she still feels grateful.

“Those skirts are a truly horrible idea,” Mrs Locus has told her. “They’re a red rag to a bull. I can’t help Scutta - far too late for that one, I fear - but I can try to help you stay safer, if you’ll let me.”

Tanty will take the he label Locus’s Pet if it keeps her out of trouble with the worst men at the school.

Skirt still not fully dry, she knows she has to go now. The bell has gone for start of classes, she’s already running late! She rushes in a diagonal line across the playground - she sees a few sets of eyes from the younger classes downstairs following her. Then she’s inside, up the near stairs and along the corridor towards the far end. Past the teachers’ common room and the seamstress’s room - once the Headmaster’s on-site office, the door of which he rarely darkened, preferring to work from his grace-and-favour house. Needan pulls in a breath her own class door, Mr Needan’s ten plus, and knocks.

Chorlo Needan’s day has not started well. Mrs Locus, reliable to a fault, is absent. At the back of his class is the glowering presence of Ulberta Shrimp, a female assistant he’s avoided like the plague, knowing only that she’s built like a stocky little bulldog. Mrs Locus has been bad. Now this ugly, pug-faced battleaxe? Inside his own head, he’s been muttering, Why Shrimp? Another woman? Give me an effing break!

Mrs Locus is normally reliable to a fault. Needan is green - new-in, not long past being a supply, or fill-in teacher.And he’s been judged on his quite patchy teaching skills, he’s been sure, from day one, by Mrs Locus. Her words, if written down, have been technically patient - at least as regards his teaching habits - but her tone has been acerbic. He’s been finding her oppressive - the woman has just so many years in teaching over his. She’s kept finding subtle ways to let him know it every day, too. The little coughs and throat-clears when she disagrees with something he’s said. Her chin-down head shakes, out of sight of the girls. Her direct, stony glares when she outright disapproves. And, though she does not interrupt so often when Needan is actively teaching, she lectures him about his technique in the breaks. Featured phrases: ’You shouldn’t,’ ‘You really should never,’ ‘You just mustn’t,’ and, ’Honestly, I don’t think it’s a good idea at all to... ‘

Chief amongst her bugbears are his hints that this or that girl could do with a spanking. He’d dropped it as a threat a few times in his first few days. “If you don’t do better, you could find yourself at the back of the class.” He knows that this is what generally happens - girls get pulled to the back for a quick-fire tanning. As well as supply teaching spots in some other local schools, he’d taught here last term for several weeks - subbing for Mr Beelar, who’d had some persistent problem with a nasal tract infection. It wouldn’t go away and eventually needed surgery, so that supply job kept being renewed for Needan. Same school, same class. So he knows this year’s ten plus class fairly well - though as a supply teacher, he hadn’t felt free to go at them. But he’d let Mr Fairlaw do it now and then, and that’s how he knew about the back-of-the-class thing. Fairlaw had been gagging for the chance, as well, since Beelar, he’d heard, was a greedy young man who’d take every opportunity himself.

Needan on day two this term: “Keep talking out of turn like that, Coortin, and you’ll get what you deserve.”

Mrs Locus, after class: “It simply does not work as an education tool. It is entirely self-defeating. It will inoculate the girls against the very idea of learning useful things.”

If he’s truthful with himself, the woman scares him silly. She’s been on his case since the start of the term - coincidentally, the start of his career, at least, as a proper, full-time teacher. He’d dreamed - fantasised - about what it would have been like to go at Mamey Coortin that day. The girl had just kept talking, asking stupid questions about irrelevant things when he was trying to get going teaching on the Tuesday of his first week. Willa Torrano was another one - that girl was a shrill, incessant giggler - and he’d threatened to bring her out to the front of class on the following day, for an over-the-knee pasting. That one had got him his biggest dressing-down of the lot from Mrs Locus. “Mr Needan - I thank you for not having actually followed through...” Well, he’d seen her thunderous look, from her perch at the back. “ ... but that sort of threat will work entirely counter to whatever intent you had by dangling it! No, Mr Needan, no!”

He’d resented that so much that when he’d had to pick girls for yellow skirts, in the second half of the second week, both Coortin and Torrano had been the picks he wouldn’t budge from, however much the sour-faced Mrs Locus protested. She’d suggested the others - all four dumpy or dull, not girls any red-blooded male would fancy having sprawled over his lap. Mrs Locus hadn’t protested Scutta much for orange - Needan had been amazed by that, though what he hadn’t got at the time was that by putting a girl in orange, he was making her a target for every man at school, not just himself. Shella Tanty he’d mentioned third for an orange skirt. Mrs Locus’s suggestions had been drabber picks than all four of her yellows. She’d rejected two prettier girls out-of-hand, telling him they were far too bright to be singled out for who-knows-what. She’d tried the same tactic with Tanty for a while, but when Needan dug his heels in and point-blank refused all her other suggestions, she eventually gave in. Then - though Needan is less aware of it than Tanty herself - Locus started protecting the girl in other ways.

But today, Thursday morning of week three, Mrs Locus is away. Some family issue. Needan has not been informed of the details.

He’s found this out just now - news carried to him by Mrs Locus’s temporary replacement, Shrimp herself. The dull Headmaster - who he’s met with twice already in just a few weeks, once for his interview and once on his appointment (more often than most teachers meet with Leezing in a term) must surely have it in for him, he thinks. Locus’s severity, instantly replaced by this battleaxe chess piece, a lead weight who’s been glowering from the moment she sat down. Seeming to suck in the air all around her: a black hole of a presence.

“I must sit in on your class till Mrs Locus’s return. Orders from above.”

Give him a man! A bloke he can talk to normally!

“Studdles has sufficient experience,” Shrimp tells him. Eldon Studdles of class nine plus is who she normally assists. “New supply bod will sit in on Studdles’ class, then.”

“I’m sure I would have coped,” Needan mutters to his chest.

Then it’s time to start the roll call. Don’t look at the bulldog, look at the list, try and rattle the names off. He gets right up to to S and no girl is absent. Then, “Tanty?”

Nothing. His second Orange girl: Scutta has answered just a moment before, sitting in her stunningly too-short orange wisp of a skirt.

“Is there a problem, Mr Needan?”

“Tanty. Second orange.” His eyes scan the room.

“Have you received a note?”

He shakes his head.

“The solution is simple, then. Assign another.”

There’s a nervous, but urgent knock at the door. “Come in!” Needan says.

The door opens up, and there is Shella Tanty, looking somehow dishevelled. Her skirt seems - what? Wet?

“Where the hell have you been?” Needan asks, his anger at the Shrimp thing displacing so fast that the girl recoils.

“My mum washed my clothes but forgot to take them out of the washer!” This excuse has come to Tanty as she runs up the stairs.

“I was about to put another girl in orange!”

The girl’s head clicks around her classmates’ faces. “Who is it?” she asks, horrified.

“Nobody. Ten seconds later, Tanty - just ten seconds. Sit down, please.”

The girl shuffles to her desk. Confused. Mrs Locus isn’t there at the back, it’s this other woman in her place.

Needan neatens up his papers. Clears his throat. Looks up briefly, trying to avoid Shrimp’s glower. He says, “Right. Well. Whatever.” He finishes the roll call, then asks, “Ladies, assignments? Scutta, go around the room. Collect last night’s homework.” At least he’ll get a minor thrill from watching the gorgeous slut’s perfect little arse.

A throat is being cleared. Deeper, more insistent than Mrs Locus’s standard disapproval. He tries to ignore it. But here it comes again.

“Mrs Shrimp?” he asks.

“Miz,” she says. “May I ask why you haven’t thought to punish the late girl?”

“Why I’ve not...” Needan frowns. “I’m sorry, what?” he asks.

“The girl was late. She gave an excuse that I think may be lacking the full spectrum of truth. Her lateness very nearly caused another girl to suffer the orange.”

“Yes I ... Well I...”

“If this had been Mr Studdles’ class, I would have acted on his behalf already, Mr Needan.”

This exchange is Needan’s first solid clue that Shrimp is no equivalent to Mrs Locus - that all female assistants may not be alike. “Mr Studdles would have ... for being only a minute late?”

Shrimp purses her mouth and sniffs, “Mr Studdles does not keep discipline. Not interested. I do.”

“You?” Needan may be green, but he’s clear as day that women assistants never punished the girls.

“Yes. Me.”

“Where?” He clears his own throat. “Would you have punished her? I mean. In his class?”

“Why, at the back,” says Shrimp. “Out of sight. As the Governors’ notes on punishment suggest. Though you may be busy teaching, Mr Needan, I am perfectly free to undertake such an odious task.” When Needan stares back with a goldfish-bowl mouth, Shrimp continues, “I can punish the late girl at the rear, as proposed. Or you might wish to punish her. In front of her classmates? As a visual example. Since her lateness may have pegged one for the draft as well. So that all these girls can witness just how tardy she has been.”

Needan finds that his words won’t come. “Ah ... I...”

Shrimp stares. She wrinkles her up-turned, too-short nose. “If you’d rather not take responsibility.”

It’s like she’s goading him. Disapproving, like Locus, but with a diametrically opposite intent. He asks, “You don’t think that would be, um, counter-productive?”

The whole class is paying the minutest attention, turning their heads like spectators at a tennis match. Even Imenna Scutta, collecting assignments, has stopped half way to listen and stare.

“To what?” asks Shrimp.

“To - learning? Mrs, ah ... Mrs Locus, she thinks...”

Shrimp cocks her blocky head on its wide, short neck.

“That physical puh, ah, pun ... we might talk this through at the break, Miss Shrimp?”

“Miz, Mr Needan. Mrs Locus disapproved of physical punishment? In class, if I take your meaning, Mr Needan?”

“Yes. I suppose. Are you sure we should talk this out now, ah, Miz Shrimp?”

“Yes. Sure. And yourself?”

“Myself what?”

“Your opinion. On such visceral matters.”

“You want me to give it in front of the class?”

“Happening now,” says Shrimp, shrugging. “Girl just walked in late. When else? Time of essence.”

“Just a little late, surely.”

“Still. Trouble-maker,” Shrimp says. “Orange skirt? One in need of special attention? The girl arrived late with a questionable excuse. Another girl about to be stripped down to orange. Suffer for her tardiness. Am I right there, girls?”

They stare at her, mouths open.

“Perhaps they’d like to know who you would have chosen, Mr Needan?”

“It’s not relevant, surely.”

“No?What d’you think, girls?”

“There has been no need...”

“Close, though. Very. So it could have been any girl? Save for the one who’s lolly-gagging currently.” She’s pointing now to Scutta, the one girl Mr Needan has spanked already. Though not in class, where Mrs Locus could have seen. Each spanking awarded rather furtively, with the woman nowhere near. And the girl had kept shtum, turned up as instructed after school, did what he told her, then not blabbed after. Though if Locus had looked, she’d find the things on the Database by now.

“So you think I should...”

“Punish the late girl? Certainly. Your choices are - seven strokes of the cane, either ten or eleven of the belt, strap or crop, five of a paddle, fourteen of the tawse, fifteen or sixteen from a wooden spoon or hairbrush. Or thirty five from a slipper, if you happen to have one. Other than that, as many hand spanks as you feel appropriate.”

“As many?” Needan stands there, stunned. How can she rattle off numbers, variations, as quickly as that?

“In fact - hand spankings. No need for them to be either-or.”

“Sorry? Meaning?”

“You may spank her as you like, then follow up with another implement. To crack in the lesson.”

Shella Tanty looks like she’s trying to disappear. She’s the one girl in the class whose head fails to ping-pong, as she seems to slip ever further under her desk.

“I...” Mr Needan begins. Then swallows.

Shrimp tips her chunky head again.

“I ... ah, I do take your point, Miz Shrimp,” he says. “That Tanty’s lateness very nearly caused another of her classmates to fall foul. Of the orange skirt rule.”

“Indeed. I’m glad to hear it.”

“I will ... I suppose I should ... spank the girl myself? Afterwards?”

Shrimp says, “No time like the present. Whip a dog for fouling the floor when it happens, dog’ll get it and stop. One hour later, just won’t. Behaviour will persist.”

“At, ah - now, then ... At - at the front of the class?” He asks this as a question directed at Shrimp.

She purses her mouth and tips back hear head.

Needan’s senses are in overdrive. His heart is racing - this is it for him, something he has dreamed of a thousand times or more, plus so many times each day since he started as a staff-based teacher. But had never yet found the balls to do, what with Locus judging his every twitch and fumble.

Shrimp. So forbidding. A blocky shadow, a shudder in his way. To be avoided at all costs. Yet, here he is, about to make the leap. To do what so many other colleagues get to do, so apparently casually, day in and day out.

He looks straight at the girl, who looks stiff, slid half way under her seat. “Tanty, um - to the front, please?”

Despite his less than forceful instruction, the girl pushes up. Standing tall, she’s just five foot nothing, with a pretty round face - but fully in proportion for a taller girl. She might be small up top, but her damp orange skirt swells to nice full hips.

Needan stands up too, feeling that he might just topple over. He pulls his own chair out. It’s a simple, sturdy upright, made well enough that it doesn’t creak, even when he leans his weight on just its back legs. He puts it down on his small stage, facing the front. Turns it to one side. Realises that will turn her face away from the class. Turns it back the other way.

Shrimp is busy clearing her throat. Needan glances up.

“The markings,” she says.

Just below his small stage, markings indicate camera positions, which he’s never has cause to employ till now.

“I suppose I should...”

“That is their purpose, Mr Needan.”

He shifts the chair down off his low teacher’s stage and between two cameras embedded in the floor. Shrimp produces another pointed cough. She’s indicating the position of the camera at his chest. Miming a press.

There’s a code. An alert code, he used it when he finally found the guts to spank Imenna Scutta. In the punishment room, the old nurse’s office (with the nurse now demoted to a prefab lean-to at the back end of the teaching block). The alert tells the tech crew to start up their recording gear. Two taps to turn the chest cam on. Three to a lower button, which indicates a classroom. Then the code for ten plus.

In a moment, he sees a red light blinking brightly on his chest cam.

Shrimp says, “Point the camera at the equipment you wish the technicians to activate.”

“Oh. Right.” Needan does so. There is quite a long pause, as if the hidden technicians aren’t sure what they’re supposed to be doing. Perhaps, locating which cameras to turn on? Then two more red lights blink on below Needan’s classroom floor. The first time they have done so other than to test them.

He sits on his chair. He’s facing towards the front of the class. Shella Tanty stands close in front of him. Hesitantly, like she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do.

“Um ... come over,” he says.

She starts to go over his lap, from his left to his right.

He tells the girl, “No. Other way. Right handed?”

Her pretty round face is blushing now. She shuffles around to his other side and - tentatively - begins to fold herself down. She props herself up on her hands and toes, not yet dropping to his lap.

He’s hesitant too. He puts his left hand on the small of her back. She lowers herself. With his right hand, he flips her still-damp skirt up. Not that it covered much at all beforehand.

“I’m, ah - well I will spank you for ... for being late, and ... you know.”

He puts his right hand on her left cheek. Sighs. Lifts the hand. Brings it down without much force. Does the same with her right cheek. Alternates - left again, right right.

Shrimp is making a throat-clearing comment. He looks.

“May I make an observation?” she asks.

“Er ... yes, I suppose.”

“The girl was late. The excuse she gave sounded laughably weak. She almost caused another girl to suffer the orange.”

“Yes I know. Your point?”

“Those are serious offences. Especially, to my mind, that final one.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

Shrimp pauses. Flares her nostrils. “If I may, there is no need to treat the girl as if she is a porcelain doll. She will not break.”

“You think I should go...”

“Harder, yes.”

“Ah.”

“Or I can take over, if you might prefer it.”

“Good lord, no!” says Needan. “So you think ... a bit harder?” He smacks Shella Tanty with double the force.

“You are hitting a part which bounces back, Mr Needan. Almost as if that is its purpose, I imagine.”

“You mean like, half as much again?”

“Perhaps considerably harder.”

“Oh.” He sighs. “I thought I might warm her up. You know.”

The woman shakes her head and asks, “Why? So as not to hurt her? What is the point of a spanking, Mr Needan?”

“Well to punish ... yes I see.” He spanks the girl hard now - with double the impact. It makes Tanty grunt. Then, without looking up again, he falls into a rhythm. He gives her twenty spanks, then glances at Shrimp. “How was that?”

“A start, I suppose,” says Shrimp.

Needan’s hand is stinging. “A start?”

Miz Shrimp shrugs. “Not bad for an opening salvo. Mr Needan, the girl is fully sixteen.”

“Yes. I know,” he says.

“There is simply no requirement to let girls of sixteen keep their underwear on. Means of control excepted, of course.”

“Oh.” Needan swallows.

Shrimp waits.

Needan flares his nostrils. He says, “Tanty, stand up and take your knickers down.”

“Off.”

The girl stands up. Every eye is on her as she - hesitantly - hooks her thumbs in her pants, then lowers them to only just below her bum cheeks.

“Oh for God’s sake,” says Needan, and pulls them down himself.

Blushing more strongly, Shella Tanty shuffles her knickers off her ankles. Then stands up, holding them limply in her left hand.

Needan takes them. Folds them up. And stuffs them into his right-hand trouser pocket. “Back over,” he says.

Shella Tanty swallows and drops herself down over Needan’s lap. She clamps her legs together, tight. Needan starts to spank. And this time, as he drops his hand in heavy, solid wallops, he sees imprints of his hand spring up brightly in the teenager’s bottom.

When he feels he’s had enough for now, he sends her back to sit blushing at her desk. It’s only when he returns to his own, with his chair back in its normal position, that he realises he still has her knickers in his pocket. He’s about to call her back, when he sees Miz Shrimp smiling - as if in approval. She even pats her hip. Nods twice, and winks.

In the break, once the girls have scarpered - with Tanty waiting, hesitantly, hanging back - Needan says to Shrimp, “Do you think that was - you know - okay? How I punished the girl?”

“It was passable,” says Shrimp. “Impressive that it happened at the front though, where all her classmates could watch. More embarrassing, right, Tanty?”

“Yes. I still...”

Shrimp clears her throat. “Thing is, Needan, I personally think she still deserves more.”

The girl’s face registers shock at this. Her head movements become bird-like, short and clipped. She takes one step back, but shrimp’s hand lifts towards her with a single finger raised.

“The girl may be in orange, but - as you know - I am a female assistant. Why that makes any difference, I cannot fathom. But I ask your permission here, in the classroom - where she is, for some reason, still waiting - for freedom to punish the girl. Same as you, Needan. Same as a man.”

“For this one girl?”

Needan feels grateful for Shrimp’s interventions, even though, in one sense, she gave him a hard time. But he’s thrilling from his breakthrough.

“Well, for now,” says Shrimp.

Needan pauses, eyebrows down. Then says, “Yes. Why not? Granted, Miz Shrimp. You said you had at girls in Mr Studdles’ class?”

“A female assistant may do so with,” she says, clearing her throat angrily, “with permission from the teacher. Inevitably male.”

“And Studdles gave it.”

“He does not care to do it himself.”

Needan stares. The very idea is alien to him.

“So - yes?” says Shrimp. “For Tanty here?”

“Why not?” he says.

“Good.” Shrimp turns to the girl, who’s been feeling stupid to be waiting, unasked, while Shrimp talks about her - but feeling that she can’t simply walk away, either. But her day just gets worse.

“Tanty, I believe a caning is in order.”

The girl seems genuinely shocked. She squeals, “But I only wanted my knickers back!”

“Well. More fool you, since Needan may hold onto them however long he wishes. So. At the back of the class, you will find a long case, long enough for a small fishing rod. Though in fact, it holds a cane. Fetch it quickly.”

The stunned girl shuffles off to the back of the room. She knows Shrimp already: she was in class 9+ last year, and Shrimp was the assistant. So she knows from experience that she needs to act with haste. She finds the long case standing upright - recognises it from last year. She fumbles with it, feels inside and pulls out a cane. Then she brings it to the woman, holding the thing out across both of her palms.

“On all fours! Where you were spanked,” says Shrimp. She presses the chest camera hanging round her neck, seemingly practiced, then announces, “Shella Tanty, orange uniform, a caning. Tanty was late to class, claiming that her mother failed to dry her clothes. Just moments later and another girl would have had to be selected, and placed in the orange.”

Needan watches, nonplussed, as Shrimp goes behind the girl and, without hesitation, kicks her legs apart. Considers. Shifts them wider. Then, leaning over with a grunt, unbelts the girl’s orange skirt and drops it on the nearest desk, so that neither of the under-floor cameras has any view obscured.

Shrimp saws at the girl’s buttocks with the cane, then tells her, “Your teacher Mr Needan has just given me permission - general permission - to punish you as and when I see fit, Tanty. You have been caned before, I take it?”

The girl squeaks, “No?”

“Ah. How delightful.” Shrimp pulls her cane back, and whacks it into Shella Tanty’s backside. The girl jerks, then loudly sucks spit through her teeth. Her hands tense in claw shapes against the floor as she swings her hips forward, shudders and clenchedsher bum cheeks - though the width of her feet prevents them from closing. Shrimp measures quickly, whips back and flashes the rod nto Tanty’s cheeks a second time. Then a third, in quick succession.

To Needan’s surprise, Shrimp is holding her cane out towards him. “Mr Needan? Thought you like the girl to know your feelings on the matter.”

“I - well - um - yes? Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”

“I have permission to punish her now, do I not? She’s in orange. I’m sure I’ll catch up.”

“Oh. Yes ... yes I suppose.” Needan takes the cane from her fingers. Stands where Shrimp stood. Places the rod against the poor girl’s bottom.

He’s spanked Imenna Scutta. Used a slipper on her once. Had her stand in some semi-rude positions - feet apart with her hands on her head, that kind of thing. But he’s not yet caned anyone. Only practiced on a cushion. What with all Mrs Locus’s disapproving words, he doesn’t even keep his cane at school now.