WEDDING RING
399
her hair. Beyond her, in the neatly furnished room ("quite genteel,"
the journal called it, while noting the barred windows), Cf:tss saw a
rocking chair and little table, and on the table a sewing basket with a
piece of fancy needle-work lying there with the needle stuck in it, "as
though some respectable young lady or householder had dropped it
casually aside upon rising to greet a guest." Cass recorded that some–
how he found himself staring at the needlework.
"Yeah," Mr. Simms was saying, "yeah." And grasped the girl by
the shoulder to swing her slowly around for a complete view. Then
he se1zed one of her wrists and lifted the arm to shoulder level and
worked it back and forth a couple of times to show the supple articula–
tion, saying, "yeah." That done, he drew the arm forward, holding
it toward the Frenchman, the hand hanging limply from the wrist
which he held. (The hand was, according to the journal, "well moul–
ded, and the fingers tapered.") "Yeah," Mr. Simms said, "look at
that-air hand. Ain't no lady got a littler, teensier hand. And round
and soft, yeah?"
"Ain't she got nuthen else round and soft?" one of the men at
the door called, and the others laughed.
"Yeah," Mr. Simms said, and leaned to take the hem of her
dr~s,
which with a delicate flirting motion he lifted higher than her waist,
while he reached out with his other hand to wad the cloth and draw
it
into a kind of "awkward girdle" about her waist. Still holding the
wad of cloth he walked around her, forcing her to turn (she turned
"without resistance and as though in a trance") with his motion until
her small buttocks were toward the door. "Round and soft, boys,"
Mr. Simms said, and gave her a good whack on the near buttock to
make the flesh tremble. "Ever git yore hand on anything rounder ner
softer, boys?" he demanded. "Hit's a cushion, I declare. And shake
like sweet jelly."
"God-a-mighty and got on stockings," one of the men said.
While the other men laughed, the Frenchman stepped to the side
of the girl, reached out to lay the tip of his riding crop at the little
depression just above the beginning of the swell of the buttocks. He .
held the tip delicately there for a moment, then flattened the crop
across the back and moved it down slowly, evenly across each buttock,
to trace the fullness of the curve. "Turn her," he said in his foreign
voice.
Mr. Simms obediently carried the wad around, and the body
followed in the half revolution. One of the men at the door whistled.
The Frenchman laid his crop across the woman's belly as though he
were a "carpenter measuring something or as to demonstrate its flat-
