MY SECRET LIFE
came home with Tom in my aunt’s carriage I recollect. Before going to bed, I ordered hot water for a footbath. How we looked at each other as I ordered it. I washed my shirt as well as I could, and looked sadly at my sore prick, I could not pull the skin back, so much as usual, it was torn, raw, and slightly bleeding.
Awake nearly all night, thinking of my pleasure and proud of my success; I rose early, and looking at my shirt, found stains still visible, and that I had so mucked it in washing, that an infant could have guessed what I had been doing. I knew that my mother who now did household duties herself, selected the things for the laundress; and in despair hit on a plan: I filled the chamber-pot with piss and soap-suds, making it as dirty as I could, put it near a chair and my shirt hanging over it carelessly, so as to look as if it had dropped into the pot by accident; left it there, and put on a clean shirt. After breakfast my mother who usually helped to make my bed, and her own as well, called out to me; up I went with my heart in my mouth, to hear her say, she hoped I would be a little more careful, and remember that we had no longer my poor father’s purse. “Look”, said she, “a disgraceful state you left your shirt in, I am ashamed to have it sent to the laundress, have been obliged to tell the housemaid to partly wash it first, you are getting very careless. Charlotte afterwards told me, that when mother gave her the shirt to rough wash, she felt as if she should faint. I need not repeat about my prepuce, which as said I could now pull down with a little less difficulty. Lacerated and painful over night, it was much more swollen and sore the next morning, when I pissed it smarted,
—104—
