On their return from the lake, Billy’s friends thought sure they saw an angry Blanche Horton marching someone with a very red bottom into the back door of her house. The sorry victim looked an awful lot like Billy Horton, they concluded. While all of them liked Billy, they all felt genuine relief that it was he, not they, who had earned that determined disciplinarian’s wrath. Billy obediently and timidly spent the remainder of that eventful day in his room, laying face down on his bed, his bare bottom raised up as high as he could place it, trying to catch whatever breeze might cool it slightly. He wasn’t sure how Aunt Blanche knew it would take a week for him to sit down without soreness, but it did. As the summer wore on, Billy tried his best to avoid trouble and the blistering spankings which would surely follow.
Aunt Blanche18
