Chapter 11

Well over an hour had passed since the Fete had started and the three cold and wet girls (Darlene, Kylie and Tracy) were either becoming accustomed to their ordeal or were, by this time, too numbly apathetic to care. They still smiled brightly at the throng as they climbed the ladder. Between immersions, as they patiently and resignedly awaited their next turn, they were contriving to restore their ruined coiffures to some kind of order.

Kylie's bikini top had early on started to cause trouble and on her third downward trip had come adrift altogether, the strap breaking and the insubstantial bit of fabric fluttering down into a crowd of hooting youths, whose anxiety to capture it as a souvenir had caused a minor riot, after which one person had required immediate and urgent medical attention and another was to limp painfully for several weeks thereafter.

This unfortunate mishap had clearly left her with a few questions to answer when next she was in the terrifying presence of her short-tempered father, who might be away for the day, but would surely find out when he returned - this being a small and tightly knit community whose microscopically small-minded denizens delighted in all kinds of tittle tattle and malicious gossip, the more malicious the better. She could feel, in an anticipatory way, the weals on her backside already, as she rubbed her exposed bottom. The germ of a GREAT IDEA was forming in her young and bucolic mind. Something to do with sheep and lambs. (You've guessed it already, folks, haven't you? - author)

To those watching from the opposite side of the square, her one remaining covering, a tiny and triangular piece of black cloth, looked not unlike her pubic forest and several people mistook it for precisely that, immediately wandering over to take a closer look, only to turn away, regretfully, when they realised their mistake.

Beatrice had indeed attracted a large audience for her dance routine, but was finding it tiring in the heat and had just taken her second break of the day. The piper, too, was getting tired and more importantly, thirsty. This gentleman had just taken himself off to the Royal Oak for a bit of much needed lubrication, as he put it. He was to be away for quite some time and his playing was not, alas, to be henceforth of quite the same high standard as earlier in the day.

The involuntarily idle Beatrice wandered around the square, looking at first one attraction and then another, followed by a devoted group of admiring young men who were still not entirely used to the sight of this hitherto fully covered girl in all her glorious nudity. Each stand she visited benefited from her presence because of this following and she soon became quite popular with the other exhibitors, many of whom were seeing this hitherto distant and otherworldly girl in a new light.