Harry was kept busy serving small snacks, taking the empty glasses to the kitchen, washing and drying them, and then bringing them back refilled. Once he tried to use a large tray to be able to carry several glasses at one time, but the effort was a disaster. The tray was smooth and the glasses still damp, so they all started to slide first toward one edge, then towards the other as the boy tried to straighten the tray. There was a crash and everyone turned to see what the noise was.
"I told you the boy would be nothing but trouble," Geraldine said with a deep sigh. "Harry, clean up this mess this minute then come back and bring me the tawse."
"I - Im sorry, Auntie," the stricken boy whined. "I didnt mean to... It just slipped..."
"You had better start cleaning, boy," Brian added, "or it will just be worse."
Harry quickly obeyed and swept up the broken glass, recovered those that had miraculously survived the slide on the tray and disappeared into the kitchen. Several minutes he emerged, red-faced, holding the thick tawse kept in the kitchen. With the visitors watching with obvious amusement, he handed the dreaded instrument to his aunt.
"Bend over, boy, and pull your shorts well up in back. And I mean really well up. I want to see some more bare bottom from below the hems," Geraldine ordered.
Harry, flushed and ashamed, bent and tightened the seat of his skimpy shorts even more. He pulled vigorously at the waistband in back until half his bare bottom cheeks came to view. They stared at the thick cane marks.
"I will give you twenty," Geraldine said, "and I think I am being quite lenient because you still have that little visit to Mr. Randalls study later on. Now you will remain in position." She paused for a moment, her eyes on the boys bottom. Then she added, "on each side."
The tawse went into action and the sharp crack of leather smacking bare flesh reverberated through the room, soon followed by the boys loud wails of distress. After ten juicy lashed across lower buttocks and upper thighs, Harry started to complain and plead.
"Oww, oww! Not so hard, please, Auntie! Oh, oh, it hurts, it hurts." To which of course no one reacted except perhaps with a little smile.
Geraldine had a lot of strength in her arm and she wielded the strap with relish. Each stroke make the bare flesh bounce and jump as the affected area turned redder and darker.
Once Harry tried to cover his left thigh which had just felt a particularly painful stroke on the inner parts and had been awarded three extra for that. He didnt try that again and the last strokes, heavy as they were, were absorbed with stoic restraint if not without howls of pain.
At last it was over and the sobbing boy was ordered back to his chores. He walked with stiff legs and a runny nose, offering and serving various plates, filling glasses and keeping the tables clean.
Then, maybe an hour later, it was time for that visit to the study.
"Martha, Ralph, Dorothy," Brian announced theatrically, I now want you to come with us to the study so you can see how we teach the boy some manners. He was set a task this morning, not much, just a little run before breakfast, within a certain set time. And do you think the child obeyed? No, he ambled around the track as if he were bird watching. I think he deliberately tried to insult us, show us that we cant make him do things he doesnt want to do. Well, he is wrong and we will now prove it to him." To Harry, who stood very close to Brian, weeping and trying to ease the strain on his ear which Brian was pinching and pulling to his hearts content, he said, "Shorts off, boy."
With a wild glance around at the spectators to his humiliation, Harry grudgingly unbuttoned his shorts, pushed them down and stepped out of them.
"Fold them neatly and place them on the table," Geraldine admonished the child. Then it was over the end of the sofa while Brian selected one of his favourite canes.
Martha," Geraldine said, "would you suggest a number of strokes this scamp should get for his disobedience this morning?"
Martha looked a bit taken aback but said gamely, "Well, I have no experience in these matters. I know boys should be handled firmly and severely punished for disobedience, but as to suggest the actual punishment..."
"Oh, come now. Just a suggestion," Brian laughed. They looked at the boy, bare from the waist down, dutifully bent and displaying his naked behind to the visitors. At least he was glad to hide his flushed, crimson face from them within the leathery cushions.
"Well, all right. I would say twelve strokes," Martha finally ventured.
"Good. And now you, Ralph. What do you say?"
"I will say eighteen. Hes a big boy for his age with a strong set of buttocks and thighs. He should have no trouble taken eighteen."
"Excellent. Now, Dorothy, it is your turn."
Dorothy seemed quite excited at the spectacle the boy was presenting and she licked her lips. This was going to be fun seeing that little bottom soundly caned. Yes, she really wanted to enjoy that.
"How about two dozen," she said gaily. "Two dozen should be the least a boy deserved for disobedience, dont you think?
"Going once, going twice - sold to Dorothy for eighteen strokes," Brian joked. "Congratulations, Dorothy, your bid has won."
As Brian got ready to inflict due punishment on an errant schoolboy, the visitors took in the boys bruised buttocks and thighs from his previous whippings. They looked so tender and vulnerable, they were curious as to how he would take those cane strokes across them. They didnt have to wait long.
Brian raised the cane and swished it down with gusto. The cane bit in deep into the underside of the buttocks, lifting them up and pushing the boy even further into the cushions. Harry screamed.
"Golly," Dorothy exclaimed, "do you always hit that hard? Are all of them going to be this severe?"
Brian swung the cane as he answered. "But of course, Dorothy. The boy has to feel it, doesnt he? If this is to be a punishment, it has to hurt. And it will hurt, a lot. That much I can promise him." Another stinger landed across the darkly wealed thighs and Harry howled.
"Are boys caned like that also at school?" Martha now wanted to know, watching as the cane swished again and smacked into the small buttocks.
"They should be," Geraldine answered. "But headmasters these days have to abide by the boys parents wishes. So they cant always give those snot-nosed brats what they deserve." The cane sung and the boy echoed his own wail.
The next three strokes were real beauties and the visitors watched in silent awe. Harry was not so silent as he wept and pleaded.
"Be quiet, boy," Geraldine said at last. "This whining and begging is disgusting. Hold your tongue, now or I will ask Mr. Randall to start from the beginning. You will take your whippings in silence. Stop that crying at once, do you hear?
It took Harry several minutes just to get his sobbing under control but after a considerable pause in the proceedings, the boy finally had himself under control and the punishment was resumed. The cane swished. "Eleven," counted Dorothy with a girlish sing-song. "Seven more to go. Plus the three extra, of course. So ten more."
And ten more the boy received. There was no let-up, no mercy. If the boy was sentenced to eighteen strokes, that was the amount he would receive, no matter how much the boy carried on. On the contrary, the more noise he made, the more strokes should be due him. This time it hand only been three extra, but Geraldine made it clear that te next time Harry screamed and howled like a lunatic, the extra strokes would be considerably more.
When the last stroke had lashed into the bare bottom, Harry was trembling from head to foot, both from the pain as well as from having to control his reactions to that pain. It had cost him all his willpower not to bleat and bawl at each cut, but fear of more pain had helped.
"It is really remarkable how boys learn to obey orders only after they have had a thorough flogging," Ralph said, visibly impressed with the Randalls methods. "You wonder why boys will be so stubborn. Or is it because they are so forgetful that they dont remember how the cane hurts when they commit their little misdemeanours?"
"Boys are slow," Dorothy opined. "They dont like to study and it takes them ages before they remember a Latin verb. A friend of mine, who does have a brother, told me that this brother cant remember any of his Latin lessons and each time gets the cane. I guess boys are just stupid."
They laughed. Harry squirmed uncomfortably over the arm rest of the sofa. He wanted to get off.
"Now lets see," Brian finally interrupted this conversation, "what does a boy deserve for clumsy handling of a tray, for throwing glasses to the floor, for breaking a number of them, for messing up the floor and staining the carpet? Who will start the bidding?"
Martha: "Twenty with the tawse?"
Ralph: "Ten with the tawse and ten with the cane?"
Geraldine: "Two dozen with each."
Dorothy: "Double that."
There was loud laughter.
"No, Dorothy," Brian said with a grin. "We will accept Geraldines bid but we will allow Dorothy to participate."
"Participate?" the girl asked, her eyes shining. "How?"
"We will let you hold the boy down because he will not stay down for this next session without restraint. You will see the action close up and you might even get to apply the cane or tawse yourself a few times. What do you say?"
"Agreed. I will hold him and give him at least three strokes with each," Dorothy said. And they all laughed again as Brian picked up the tawse.