"I suppose you know how many blows I get to give you with this much money?" she asked with a nasty smile.

"Meaning you're too  thick to work it out yourself, I suppose,  you half-wit.  Well, I don't make a habit of helping low-class idiots like you with their sums, but I'm in a good mood today, luckily for you! You get twenty, but as you're a bulk buyer, so to speak, you get a bonus of five.  Listen very carefully you  turnip brained lump of lard, twenty plus five equals twen-ty fi-ve - got that, bird brain? Twenty five.  I'll count for you,  since an imbecile like you almost certainly can't count higher than five!"

Julia bent over again, thankfully for the last time that afternoon and began counting off the strokes in a clear and unwavering voice which faltered not once until all twenty five soundly delivered slashes of the leather strop had inflicted yet more agony to her already sore bottom.

It had been a painful hour already.  Most of her customers had been pretty gentle, especially the boys of the village and the visitors,  and had only delivered lightly stinging blows which had not bothered her a lot, but some of the village women had scarcely been able to believe their luck as they laid viciously into that beautiful and hated bum, about which they had heard with increasingly jealous rage, their husbands and boy friends rhapsodising  for so long.

Some of the other women had hurt her, but Mrs Patterson's strength and fury were a revelation both to the silent onlookers and to the suffering Julia.  Everybody expected the poor girl, whose incredible and defiant bravery had captured their absolute and unstinting admiration by this time,  to faint away at any moment.  Finally the ordeal was over.  Mrs Patterson laid down the strop, breathing heavily after her exertion, into which she had thrown her all.

"How did you loike that you dirty, stuck  up, toffee nosed little tart?" asked this far from amiable lady as soon as she had sufficiently recovered her breath.

"I hardly felt a thing, you feeble cripple.  And how do you like THIS?"

Those who witnessed what followed were to talk it over among themselves for years afterwards.  So much seemed to happen in such a minuscule atom of time, that nobody could ever take it in or call it back to mind in any but the sketchiest of detail. The bent over Julia straightened up and wheeled round.  Before anybody was aware of any movement taking place, Mrs Patterson was reeling back senseless into the arms of the onlookers after Julia's inerrantly aimed  fist had flashed out and crashed solidly into her jaw, fracturing it  in three places with a loud and sickening  noise which all who had heard it would remember until his or her dying day.

Mrs Patterson's long-suffering husband was to become an even greater admirer of Julia after this even than he been before, since it was for several blessed and peaceful weeks that he was to be spared the hated sound of his wife's unmelodious and incessantly nagging voice, as she lay in hospital with her jaw wired up, only able to take liquid nourishment through a straw.  There was nothing that was too good for Julia in his view - he was to worship her from afar for the rest of his days!

Supremely confident that she had despatched the good lady to a temporary, but lengthy oblivion, Julia, contemptuously not deigning to give the comatose  woman any more of her attention,  picked up the strop and handed it to Beatrice - like everyone else present, thunderstruck at what had just happened- telling her that it might be needed again later and, without one backward glance,  walked away towards the three now naked girls to give them a welcome break from their incessant soakings.

...............................................................................................................................................................

"My word!  But that's one lovely, brave and formidable young lady." said Professor Potts Johnson as he reluctantly tore himself away from the town square and directed his footsteps towards the Rectory and his meeting with his good friend Jerry Scott-Talbot, to whom he had some important words to say and a tempting offer to convey.

He had not been in Little Sprodwell for some years now,  and the last he had seen of the two cousins had been the sight of a couple of tomboys whose wildness then had already given some hint of their future characters.  "What an absolute peach she has turned out to be", he thought, "One hell of a woman!  I wonder what lucky man will end up marrying her.  Lucky, he may be, but he'll have his hands full with a spirited lady like that.  I'd give a King's ransom to be in his shoes, though!"

And he resumed his walk to the Rectory.
....................................................................................................................................................

The disappointed Professor Hackenbacker had been only three places away from the head of the queue when the flaying of Julia had,  mercifully and not a moment too soon, ceased.  He was ashamed to admit to having been utterly carried away by the excitement of the occasion and his hand had been itching with anticipation as he slowly got closer and closer to that lovely posterior from whose scarlet surface the sound of leather on skin was issuing forth, sending its message of pain ringing out loud and clear across the square.  He only hoped that none of his Harvard fellow academics ever got wind of his heretofore uncharacteristic access  of sadism.  He was to hate himself and be deeply ashamed for long afterwards for this fall from grace.  Thank God he had been denied his wish at the last minute, he told himself.

As he watched the proud and undefeated girl stalk off, with her buttocks angrily red, but otherwise seemingly none the worse for her terrible, if utterly voluntary, ordeal,  walking confidently and firmly  across the square to help out the reluctantly aquatic trio,  he appreciated how right his English colleague had been in his tersely contemptuous  dismissal of this whole tawdry affair.  But it had been worth it just to witness that scene of sheer bravery and subsequent poetic justice that  had just been enacted.

Like his British fellow academic, he was lost in admiration for the beautiful Julia, and like Potts-Johnson he too saw that this was a woman who would never submit to being any man's property.  And what sane and decent man would want to stop such a lovely flower from blooming in her own way and according to her own  needs, fulfilling her own beautiful and unique destiny?  His mind was full of such thoughts as he made his way reflectively  back to the coach to await the return of the rest of the party in a few hours’ time.  He had seen enough.  He had seen too much.  Enough of the fete and too much, far too much,  of his own inner self and the darkness there of which he was so deeply ashamed and afraid.