Reasons for beatings

Writing my last blog entry, about a girl in trouble with the head prefect, I was rather struggling to think of her offence. See, I didn’t want her to have done anything specifically or seriously wrong – merely to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and to have been unfortunate enough to caught his attention when he was in a bad mood.

‘Impudent’ seemed too active for what I had in mind; the far milder ‘discourteous’ worked much better. To get to that, I’d searched an online thesaurus for inspiration, and it struck me that there were other useful phrases that might trigger punishment.

So, here’s your challenge – rank the following in descending order of severity, the one liable to land a girl in the most serious trouble at the top of your list:

(a) arrogant

(b) impertinent

(c) impolite

(d) impudent

(e) rude

I was quite taken by the inclusion of ‘pert’ on the thesaurus’s suggestions, by the way. There are certainly girls I’d enjoy spanking because they’re ‘pert’, but that doesn’t strike me as an offence in its own right.

I also learnt two new words, which I must use in scenes – if only to utterly confuse the girls as to why they are being punished:

• “I am going to cane you for being contumelious.” [Apparently ‘scornful and insulting; insolent’]
• “Girls who are procacious deserve to be thrashed.” [‘Impudent’, it seems!]