From the way he acted at first, I thought he was going to question me about the punishment. But he restrained himself and passed over the subject by remarking something to Mother about naughty girls needing a spanking once in a while.

During dinner, in reply to questions from Father, he laughingly admitted that he didn't know a thing about farming and had no intention of learning. He explained that he was an artist and, feeling that he would like to have a country retreat where he could get away from the noise and confusion of the city whenever he liked to go there, he had purchased the adjoining farm as a sanctuary. He willingly offered to let Father use as much of the farmland as he wished. When he left that evening, he smiled at me in a most peculiar sort of way as he pinched my cheek.

“You had better try being a good girl in the future, Lucille, so you won't be taken to the woodshed and given another spanking,” he said.

After that, he became a frequent visitor at our home, dropping in whenever he wished. Mother and Father both liked him, for he rarely came to see us without bringing a gift of some sort for Mother and tobacco and things like that for Father. But even though he brought me candy and books, I did not care for him.

There was a certain light which came into his eyes when he looked at me that made me afraid of him. What it was, I do not know, but he had that strange way of looking at me, especially when he knew I had recently been given a whipping.

From the very beginning of his visits to our place, he showed a decided interest in the fact that I was whipped by my parents. He hardly ever visited us without asking if I had been spanked lately; and once, when Mother remarked that she had just given me a taste of the switch, he asked how she had done it. Mother explained that she had taken me out to the woodshed, lifted my dress, took down my panties, and whipped my bare bottom with a hickory switch. Father, she explained, always used a strap on me.