I was whacked with her pillow for my pains. Speaking of pains, aside from an internal twinge, little trace remained of my defloration. I hummed as completed my toilette: such a dainty word to dance politely around the evacuation of bowel and emptying of bladder. Such was the life of a housemaid in 1865 before indoor plumbing took cholera and dysentery away. Not that the medical field gave credence to scientific evidence, miasma and sullen lower orders were to blame. Mrs. Cleanknockers believed that filth was a mortal enemy. Saturday evenings were communal bath times. Females and males separated, naturally.

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