Page:MySecretLifeVol1(1888).djvu/196

MY SECRET LIFE to our intense delight it unclosed. We stepped across the little open space under the gratings into the empty vaults, anl there arranging to take our turns of looking up at the most likely spots, we put out our heads and took our ﬁll at gazing. We were right under the wom- en, who as they looked into the shop windows, jutting out their bums in stooping, tilted their petticoats ex- actly over our heads. If there was no carriage passing, we could at times hear what they said, but that was rarely the case.

In those days even ladies wore no drawers. Their dresses rarely came below their ankles, they wore bustles, and standing over a grating, anyone below them, saw much more, and more easily, than they can in these days of draggling dresses, and cunt swabbing breeches, which the commonest girl wears round her rump. For all that, so close to the thighs, do chemise and petticoats cling, that it was difﬁcult to see the hairy slits, which it was our great desire to look at. Garters and thighs well above the knees, we saw by scores. Every now and then either by reason of scanty cloth- ing, or short dresses, or by a woman’s stooping and opening her legs to look more easily low down at the window, we had a glimpse of the cunt; and great was our randiness and delight when we did. On the whole we were well rewarded. Many as the legs and thighs are, that I have since seen, I doubt whether I have seen so many pairs of legs half-way up the thighs, and all but to the split, as I saw in the times we stood under that big linendraper’s shop window. Old and young, thin and fat, dirty and clean, ragged and neat, there was every possible variety and number of legs and their coverings. —189—