Wandering through the streets of central London between meetings.
Parents with their two daughters, clearly on holiday in the big city. (Why are they not at school? Half-term was last week.)
I imagine the one night in the week when the older girl is given permission to go into the town with some of the other girls staying in the hotel, on condition she doesn’t drink.
And when she returns at 4am, clearly drunk and smelling of smoke. (Tobacco? Or worse?). Finding her father waiting for her in the hotel lobby.
Being sent to bed. Told that she will be whipped harder than she has ever been whipped before. But only once she has slept, and sobered up. And that the punishment will take into account the bad example she has shown her younger sister…
—
Oh yes, and skipping school.
The headmaster’s study, the following Monday morning. Both girls, neat in their uniform.
“I’m sure you both know my views in truancy. And I understand that you told your father that you had my approval to go away…?”
I wonder which of them would be caned first – the older or the younger…?
Love this.
Maybe they were tourists? Half-term can be in different weeks in different countries.