Eunice Dyson's lost panties.

Quid pro quo. A timely suggestion.

Miss Dawkins knew immediately from the spelling of that name, what was in the package that Mr. Coatsworth passed into her hands. She did not need to open it. She laid it to one side and would deal with it when he left.

She knew the name; Coatsworth. There had been a pupil of that name in the former boy’s school in its last year here, which had also been his final year, just four or five years ago.

The same school she now occupied.

He had been a top student and had got a scholarship to go on to University, but after being there only for one or two years, had taken over the family farm when his father had fallen ill, but she couldn’t remember the details.

There was a lot she would like to ask him about the boy’s school, but those questions could wait for some other time. He was here to see her on some other matter than discreetly returning Miss Dyson’s panties after the poor girl had been in despair for the last two days. She knew everything that had happened. A headmistress always knew.

Mr. Coatsworth didn’t waste any time, but got to the real reason for his visit. He had a modest proposal to make (and presumably nothing like Jonathan Swift’s, ‘A Modest Proposal’; one of his more shocking pieces of writing that I would advise you, dear reader, not to read).

She listened patiently.

He had a small field of about two acres, which adjoined the school. It was barely a hundred feet from the main building. It was too small for him to do anything with, and he offered it to the school, knowing that they could make good use of it as a vegetable garden when next spring rolled around.

He would plough it, harrow it and even see that it was heavily spread with manure, and was ready for them to use, with everything turned in.

They would have to pick the rocks out of it, and see to it from there. He also offered to put up a large, heated greenhouse on it that he and the school might cooperate in looking after.

Miss Dawkins listened attentively, wondering what he might suggest in return for his generosity.

He got to the point immediately.

“I have an extensive barn just across the playing fields.” He pointed in its general directions. She knew about the barn, and could see it from her office. “At this time it is empty, and we’ve been cleaning it out and doing repairs to it.”

She knew that too. She had watched the work going on with men clambering over the roof, and the sound of hammers.

“I have a surplus of pigs, piglets, chickens and calves, as well as a bumper second crop of hay which I shall be storing over there as the weather allows.”

“I’m short-handed with it being haying time, and when we harvest the other crops, it will get even more busy. Before we know it, winter will be on us. I need some older, responsible individuals whom I can trust (she liked his proper use of English), to look after that barn, year-round, and its animals when I bring them over. I thought of this school and its girls.”

She hadn’t said anything to close it off, so he continued.

“It will mean, groups of trusted older girls to feed and water the animals, collect eggs, and clean them out, as well as to do other things that I do not have time to do. It’s all light work. I’ll spell everything out in detail before you need say anything. I shall provide all of the feed, though I know that when school lunches begin for a hundred or more girls…”

“Two hundred” She corrected him on that small point.

“…For two hundred girls, that there will be a lot of minor waste; cabbage leaves, turnip and potato peelings, carrot tops. Probably enough waste that would feed ten or more hungry pigs. The calves are all young, freshly weaned, and need careful attention.

“Before winter, I bring my sheep down and give them access to that barn for their lambing. It would be nice to have them kept an eye on too.” He let all of that sink in, and then got to his other point.

“In exchange for looking after them each day, and over and above that garden plot and greenhouse, you can have half of the eggs collected, as well as frequent chickens for the pot, and occasional pork, beef, and lamb roasts, and sausages; all of it outside of this bureaucratic nightmare of food rationing and food stamps. And there will also be a lot of fruit, and ‘seconds’ of my own vegetable crops out of the fields, that I cannot sell at market, for the school to use. Potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, and such like. A few girls with buckets, could pick in five minutes all you need to feed everyone for a day. What you can’t use, can become animal feed.”

He could see she was more than interested. He had given it a lot of thought.

“I will be the only one who will visit the barn each day to see how things are going, either very early, before anyone here is stirring, or during the school lunch, or after dinner of an evening, and then only at those times when there will be no girls likely to be there, unless an emergency crops up or it becomes necessary. I will let you set the rules and times for them, and me.”

Miss Dawkins sat back, and suggested that he write it all down, but told him that she was inclined to accept his offer anyway. The girls (older girls all older than eighteen) needed as many safe distractions as could be provided, and she would ensure that it would be safe. She liked to hear that he would be the only one working there to train the girls, and that he would be the one to bring in hay and grain, and to see that all was going well with the feeding and cleaning out.

“We won’t need any other unaccountable male helpers working in there around my girls. We don’t need the girls confused.” Confusion would not be the problem.

No, it would never do to have them find some horny young helper lifting their skirts, or romping with them in the hay.

The girls might forget where they were, and not object! Young men had that effect on hormonally-crazy girls.

Mr. Coatsworth readily agreed to that.

There would be none of his men, or any of his young helpers trusted to do anything. It might be too much temptation for all involved, if growing lasses and young men worked in proximity, working up a temperature and needed to get themselves cooled down by removing any clothing. The wrong bits might get taken off. Wrong, from only one point of view. Right, from another.

She knew about those temptations for herself, having been brought up on a farm.

Mr. Coatsworth would be temptation enough for the girls, but there was safety in numbers. No one would ever be alone with him. She would warn them of that. They’d already found out about his dog, and that had been a wake-up call for what a girl would face if she got careless. Like father, like son. But a dog, in this case.

Everything that was required was only light work, and there was nothing dangerous, other than being knocked about or stepped on by an eager and hungry calf, but it might be a bit messy, so even without her suggesting it, he offered to provide coveralls and everything needed for the more challenging jobs. Pigs and calves could be pushy devils.

The headmistress decided she could take him up on his offer without any hesitation, but with certain stipulations of her own that she would see to.

She would have to impose rules on the girls who opted to work over there. She knew that there would be a flood of girls from the older grades, and some from the middle too (with suitable chaperonage), fighting for an excuse to get out of school at any time.

The clincher to it all, was when she heard that he would also provide the school some skimmed milk, butter, and cheese that they would benefit from.

Later, she drew up her own rules for those girls who volunteered.

‘At least three older girls must be present at the same time when there is work to do.’

‘The designated girls should all arrive together, and they should leave, together.’

She would add others as she thought of them. There would need to be rules about showering, the moment they got back from the barn, and another making sure that they wore Wellingtons when they were over there, considering what they would be stepping in.

It would not do to have the school smelling like a barn.

She knew she would have to allow for the ingenuity and determination of growing girls who would always find ways to bend the rules to learn about men, especially where Mr. Coatsworth was concerned, so she would have to stay one step ahead of them.

If she had been thirty years younger, she would have been tempted to volunteer herself. Mr. Coatsworth was a catch.

She was not above speculating about which one of the older girls would get to him first if he were not careful, and even if he was, though how much he might actually have any say in it was up for debate. Men were helpless that way when the right girl came along and offered what his hormones couldn’t refuse. There would be a lot of girls in unspoken competition that way. He wouldn’t know what hit him if he wasn’t careful. Miss Dawkins would have her hands full, policing all of that.

She looked at the package he’d brought. Miss Dyson could be that one. She might be shy, or could give that impression, but she already had an inside track if she could only recognize how to use it. Perhaps not quite as obvious as: “Hello, Mr. Coatsworth. So you are the man who had his hands in my knickers already are you? You naughty boy. Would you like to try again for the jackpot?”

No, she would never do that, but Miss Dyson was a loner and a thinker, and would soon know what she wanted and then god help him, and the devil take the hindmost with those other girls. If his horny dog didn’t get them first.

The ‘working in the barn’ project, was ‘oversubscribed’, as they say, with a large number of older self-interested girls, who’d seen him that day, wanting to help, and school hadn’t even started yet. They’d seen Mr. Coatsworth (and found out about his dog, too), and soon learned what his schedule in the barn would be. They each had their own plans about the barn work, and how it might be turned to advantage one way or another to relieve the tedium of a school, miles away from everywhere.

They knew that there was never a rule made that could not be bent, or broken by an ingenious woman. So they would wear coveralls that they would change into in the barn. Presumably, that could also be taken to mean that other clothing under them could be optional?

Miss Dawkins set up a roster of duties, making sure that Miss Dyson was on two of the three shifts during the day. Sometimes, serendipity needed a bit of a boot up the arse, or a bit of goosing.

She also wrote out various rules of behavior, and continued to collect names of volunteers. Some of them even knew what ‘farm work’ was. The others would soon learn what was involved.

She didn’t have to suggest anything for Mr. Coatsworth. He would have to be there to train the girls and tell them what was needed, and there would always be enough girls to keep an eye on him, and on each other.