As the certainty that all was finished between us came to me, I got better, my grief moderated, my prick expected occupation, I was horrified at having frigged myself, and ceased doing it. Then naturally I looked at the servants. The new housemaid was ugly as sin, so I turned to Mary the cook. I was then about seventeen years old.

She was now I think twenty-six or eight years old, big, stout, but as it seemed to me then, symetrical; she had exquisite teeth, blue eyes, and a fine complexion—so fine that my mother remarked it. She was quiet in a remarkable degree, and treated me as a boy. Nine months before this I should as soon have dared to think of fucking my aunt, but experience had altered me. I thought of the light hair on her cunt, and of all I could not see, which Charlotte had innocently described to me; and the conclusions we had arrived at, that she frigged herself. Then I thought that after all, old as she was, and young as I was, she might like Charlotte, let me do her. I had once kissed her when Charlotte was with us, and she had taken it as if she was letting a child kiss her; I now tried it again, and got a quiet kiss in return; it was done with the air and manner of “There, there, you troublesome boy”, which mortified me much.