that day. Our bedtime was set back by a minute for each smack so that if we received ten smacks that day we went to bed ten minutes earlier than the evening before, and that may have been earlier than our regular bedtime depending on how much time we had to make up! Our regular bedtime, we had been told was seven in the winter and eight in the summer, which was late enough for mere fifteen year olds, we were told.

rules we trans-

But depending how many gressed in a day, or were naughty which was the official term for it (!), we might be going to bed much earlier, for while a minute for each smack was subtracted from our normal bedtime, we only got back to our regular bedtime at the nate of one minute per day. So it sometimes took a long time to get back to normal, and we could be going to bed as early as six o'clock in the evening. This was supposed to be an incentive to us to be good and so get back to normal bedtime as soon as possible. But even ten smacks took ten days to get back to normal! It was noticable that our cousins hardly ever got punished now and so were hardly ever docked of minutes at bedtime, which was a witness to the efficiency of our aunt's and Martha's methods and to the measure of docility which Carol and Mabel had

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reached!

It was hard to have to go to bed so early in the lovely long twilights of an English summer, and every effort was taken to make our stay in bed as unpleasant as possible. If put to bed earlier than the regular supper meal, the culprit was simply out of supper and went to bed hungry. The room was darkened with shutters so that the culprit could not pass the time reading, and once when I opened the shutters to read, it was noticed and I was tied in bed so I could not get

out.

I was noticed one day with my hands in the pockets of the white shorts which went with a white summer sailor suit, which itself was honrible and humiliating, a chap of fifteen wearing a sailor suit. I know my aunt said that when she was a child boys into their teens did wear such sailor suits, but certainly no boy that age was wearing it in my day. But I shall come back to the subject of my aunt and the clothes she made us wear later.

my

1 was made to take hands out of my pockets and hold them out for the inevitable caning, four on each hand, which was very painful. The grew hot and stinging, and sometimes even Then two very large safety pins

hand swelled

up

some.

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