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poured linseed oil onto her cloth, wrapped this around the long shaft of a swishy kooboo cane and worked it up and down in smooth strokes, she seemed to be in some other world entirely. Comfort, polishing the paddles, grunted and shook her head but still, she could not quite prevent herself from imagining what each individual implement would feel like on her bared bottom. This little walnut paddle, like an oval hairbrush with two backs instead of bristles. Had she ever had it? She did not think so. Surreptitiously she gave her palm a little smack.
    ‘Oh!’ said Hope, blinking as if someone had suddenly goosed her. ‘What? Oh, yes that is a mean little stinker,’ she said, her eyes twinkling in a way that made Comfort blush slightly. ‘They can use it when you are over their lap though, which is nice.’ Her eyes went blank again and her hand began to pump the cane once more.
    Too late, far too late, Comfort realised the danger. ‘Hope! How long have you been frigging that cane?’ A mass of un-oiled canes lay on the floor like some strange, wrecked cargo. Comfort had nearly finished the paddles but Hope had barely started and that meant that they were well behind the rigid schedule. She looked up at the wall clock in a panic. It had gone ten and they were less than half-way through their work.
    And then, just as she thought that the morning could get no worse, the door opened and two young men sauntered in.
    ‘So you see, young Metcalf, my Uncle’s collection is one of the finest in the country. Not so celebrated as Lord Crossthwaite’s or Mr Pennington’s to be sure, but then he prefers to use them than to catalogue and write monographs… What’s this? We are all of an uproar it seems. I promised you implements of corporal correction neatly displayed and here they are all strewn about the floor!’
    Comfort quickly got to her feet and curtsied. ‘I am sorry sir, we were just…’
    ‘I can see what you are doing, girl. Do not be alarmed. The work must go on, what? Just carry on and ignore the intrusion.’ Richard Ellington smiled in a way that might have seemed quite kindly had it not been for a rather lupine glint in his green eyes and the fact that his gaze lingered on her figure in a way that caused her heart to miss a beat.
    The instruction was quite impossible to follow. She could, and did, continue with her doleful duties, polishing each paddle and replacing it, each in its ordained place, on the great racks. And she was relieved to see that Hope had been shocked out of her trance by the arrival of the object of her devotion and was now polishing and oiling canes with alacrity, the only sign of her internal turmoil the frequent glances that the girl sent towards the two young men and a slight pinkness to her ears. Ignoring the intrusion was another matter. The men sauntered around the rod room, stepping over canes and whips at times, Mr Ellington pointing out implements of particular interest to his friend.
    ‘This is an Australian stock whip. Kangaroo hide, very tough but supple.’
    ‘I see. A devilish looking thing, indeed. Makes one fairly wince to look at it. These barrels, are they for birch rods?’
    ‘That’s right. My uncle has them cut every February, when the buds are formed but still hard as little stones. He has some birch woods up by Fortingbury. Purchased ‘em expressly for the purpose as the ones here were proving insufficient. Congratulations on obtaining the living, by the way. We shall be near neighbors when I am vicar here!
    ‘Yes, it was a stroke of luck, that. I had the promise of that parish down in Devon. But Devon is a devilish long way from civilisation and infested with troglodytes, of course. I hope you will visit often if you have the leisure once you are ordained.’
    ‘Oh, I shall have plenty of leisure. There is a perpetual curate at St Nicks who knows his business and Uncle Horace has promised to shoot me should I give a sermon more than twice a year. You must come