MY SECRET LIFE
I had now special tutors at home, and was at home when I liked, yet my chances with the cook were fewer than they had been with Charlotte, owing to her occupations. I was studying elementary chemistry, and when making some experiments in the garden parlour, burnt a table cover. My mother angry, said I had better experiment in the back kitchen again, so under that pretence, I managed to be downstairs frequently.
I used to watch Mary, slipping out into the outside passage leading to the servant’s privy, and take pleasure in the idea of her piddling there. One day, I watched her coming back, she gave her clothes a tuck between her legs, and I knew it was to dry her cunt; opened the door just as she did it, she knew that I saw the action by my grin, and her face turned scarlet. I kissed her that day, asked her timidly if she had dried it properly that morning. “Dried what?” said she innocently. “What I saw you drying when you came from the closet.” She turned away without saying a word.
A day or two after as she went upstairs to the parlour, I stopped, saw her legs, and told her she had jolly fat legs. She wished I would go upstairs, for I was in the way with my chemicals, and after that ceased talking to me. But it was difficult to avoid me, I got rude, would tuck my coat between my legs, laugh and make believe to stoop down to see her ankles, but she took no notice. Begging her to kiss me one day; she gave me two or three at once saying, “There now, go on with your chemicals”, in such a motherly way, that it mortified me excessively; making me feel the difference in our ages, as a barrier to my hopes.
But if discouraged one day, I got courage the next; impelled by a cock-stand, and my mother being out, I
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