George, trembling with alarm, turned round and stuck his rear segment into the air.
Belinda stood beside it.
She raised her first foot on that side. She brought it down hard on George’s back end.
The next little while wasn’t much fun for George because that was only the beginning.
Belinda walked past his raised rear segment and spanked him once with each foot. And as if that wasn’t enough, she then turned round and walked past him the other way, spanking him once with each foot on her other side.
So that was twenty-one spanks on one side, and twenty-one more on the other. Forty-two spanks altogether. It seems a lot, but that was a normal punishment for a disobedient centi.
Mind you, it really doesn’t hurt half as much to be spanked if you’ve got a thick cuticle on your bottom. So it wasn’t as bad as all that.
When it was over, George lowered his tingling rear segment to the ground, and rubbed some of his nearest legs over it. If centis could sniffle, George would have sniffled.
“Now, centis, go to your leaves,” said Belinda sternly.
There were no kisses for either of them.
George crept away under his leaf.
He felt very, very sorry.
I can almost hear you saying it: “Sorry he’d been so bad? Sorry he’d put Belinda into danger?”
I’m afraid not.
What he was sorry about was that he’d had a spanking from Belinda. He forgot she’d saved him. He just thought how his bottom hurt and how she wasn’t even his real mother.
Which was pretty ungrateful of him.
But if you’d just had forty-two spanks, you might not feel grateful either. Even if your life had just been saved.
And in case you’re wondering if Belinda had managed to teach George not to get into trouble, don’t even think it.
She hadn’t.
Because I’m afraid George – and here comes a wonderfully useful word for people like him who won’t learn to be sensible – George was incorrigible.