go out of the kitchen for a minute, I
did, and almost directly she came out, and passed me saying, she must
change her things before the cook came home. She would not let me stay
in the room whilst she did it, nor did I see her chemise, though I had
followed her upstairs; then the idea flashed across me that I had taken
a virginity; that had never occurred to me before. She got hot water
to wash herself. I did not know what to do with my shirt; we arranged
I should wash it before I went to bed. We thought it best to say, I had
not been home at all, and that I should go and fetch my mother. After
much kissing, hugging, and tears on her part, off I went, hatching an
excuse for not having fetched mother earlier, and we came home with Tom
in my aunt's carriage I recollect.

Before going to bed, I ordered hot water for a footbath. How we looked
at each other as I ordered it. I washed my shirt as well as I could, and
looked sadly at my sore prick, I could not pull the skin back, so much
as usual, it was torn, raw, and slightly bleeding.

Awake nearly all night, thinking of my pleasure and proud of my success;
I rose early, and looking at my shirt, found stains still visible, and
that I had so mucked it in washing, that an infant could have guessed
what I had been doing. I knew that my mother who now did household
duties herself, selected the things for the laundress; and in despair
hit on a plan: I filled the chamber-pot with piss and soap-suds, making
it as dirty as I could, put it near a chair and my shirt hanging over it
carelessly, so as to look as if it had dropped into the pot by accident;
left it there, and put on a clean shirt. After breakfast my mother who
usually helped to make my bed, and her own as well, called out to me; up
I went with my heart in my mouth, to hear her say, she hoped I would
be a little more careful, and remember that we had no longer my poor
father's purse. "Look," said she, "a disgraceful state you left your
shirt in, I am ashamed to have it sent to the laundress, have been
obliged to tell the housemaid to partly wash it first, you are getting
very careless." Charlotte afterwards told me, that when mother gave her
the shirt to rough wash, she felt as if she should faint.

I need not repeat about my prepuce, which as said I could now pull down
with a little less difficulty. Lacerated and painful over night, it was
much more swollen and sore the next morning, when I pissed it smarted,
the thin