MY SECRET LIFE
dropped my tool, rushed across to the cook, said that she had been telling about her, and made such a row, that even my deaf relative was awakened, and came out of her bed-room asking from below if anything was the matter. I was on the landing when I saw the light and hopped across to my own room in a fright. Up came the old lady, the cook came out and said, “Harriet is very unwell Maam, can you give her a little brandy ?” I had no fuck that night. The next night she began about the baker. I would answer nothing. She said, “If I have had him it’s my aflair; at all events it’s an insult to a woman whom you never gave the slightest present to yet.”
I was struck with that. My allowance was due, and I took her home some article of jewelry. She made me for the ensuing week fuck her till I was as dry as a bone, and my very arse-hole ached the last time I did it,—it was the day before my mother returned. She sat on the side of my bed and frigged me for a quarter of an hour before she got it stiff, saying that I did not seem to like her as I used to.
My mother and sister came back. I never got a poke for a fortnight. When mother returned nothing would get it out of her head, that I had not been out late of night; it never could be got out of her head that it was late at night that did the harm. Not be- ing able to get Harriet now, I waited for her one night as she went to the library. As I got near a wall by our house, I saw a man and a woman standing close up against it together; the man went away directly I ap- proached, and I saw Harriet. “There was a man with you?” said I. “Yes,” said she, “it was the baker, whom you have heard such stories about, I am going
—248—