closed at the front. It was later that I found out the reason for Carol being required to sleep in such a suit. And it was an embarrassing reason! Even that night it was very embarrassing and demeaning for me, making feel like such a little child. For I had to stand while Martha buttoned the garment up from my bottom to my neck at the back!

me

Martha hustled us into our beds, warned us not to talk to each other for fear of waking the others, tucked us in and gave us a peck of a kiss on the cheek, fastened the inside shutters on the windows, which plunged the room into dense darkness, and left the room, but leaving the door open, which however did not give much light.

When I was sure she had gone downstairs, I whispered to Sis what a rotten show it was so far. We were being treated like little children. I said that our cousins must indeed be a couple of sissies to be still in a nursery, and Carol, even his name was a sissy neutral one, it might belong to a girl, must be an awful sissy wearing a sleeping suit like a little child. And the two of them still sleeping in the same room at fifteen years of age. It was ridiculous.

Babs giggled saying that I did look so funny having the sleeping suit buttoned up! But we

14.

had better not talk further for fear of waking the others, but we would in the morning. It had been a long, tiring day and shortly afterwards, forgetting the indignities we had suffered, we drifted off in the sound sleep of childhood.

We were awakened by Martha shaking us and calling us sleepyheads. I wondered at first where we were, and then realizing, looked over to the other beds to see my cousins for the first time for years. I was so curious to see how they had Both Babs and I agreed that they

grown.

had been a pain in the neck when we last saw them, no fun at all! And it was my personal belief from what I had already experienced in this household, that they would not have changed at all but must be big sissies.

But they were not there. Martha said they were already up, and had been doing their exercises before breakfast and school. I was surprised at this, especially the idea that they were still at school, for we had not come up north until our schools were closed and the holidays had begun. I asked about this, and Martha said that the children had school in the house, a Governess coming in. I could not help but grimace and say "poor kids," and was checked by Martha for slang. Kids were little goats. This made Babs and I giggle, and we were told not to

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