Note. This story is a direct continuation from Miss Mabel parts 1 and 2. The setting is North London in 1858. Whilst I hope it can stand alone, it might be more enjoyable for the reader to read the earlier parts first. My thanks to Creativetalent for editorial help, and to Michchick98 for her help with basic text formatting.
Miss Mabel. Part 3. The Megrims
An older colleague of mine in Leicestershire, Frank Dennis; a man with much experience of women, told me many things when I was a youth, just starting out in life, and enjoying my first sexual escapades. One thing he told me that I have subsequently found amply confirmed, was that once a woman has shed her clothes and engages in intimacies, she will do so again and again as long as she retains her affection for the man in her life.
This was so with Miss Mabel, but more than fleeting opportunities were very hard to come by. Again and again, she would come into the room where I was working or reading, sit on my lap with her arms about my neck and kiss me deeply. I would reciprocate the kisses, with great enjoyment, for, to me, the moisture, warmth and sensitivity of lips and tongue replicate the sensations of other, more secret and less accessible areas. I would slip my hand up her skirts, to the division of her pantalettes (which were nothing more than two tubes of frilled and embroidered linen, held up with a drawstring) and caress what she called her "little quimmie", finding the delicious lips, and the entrance to the tunnel beyond. Then I would direct my caresses at the source of all these delicious sensations, the little pink bud, which I taught her to call her "little man in a boat". After a couple of minutes of this, some noise, a footfall, or a voice calling, would make her leap to her feet and walk out of the room; leaving us, I guess, equally frustrated and eager for a more lengthy encounter. This was to take time, but in the meanwhile, events moved forward in an entirely unexpected way.
Ever since I was a child, I have suffered from occasional attacks of the megrims -- blinding headaches accompanied by nausea, jagged flashing lights before my eyes, and an inability to bear light. When an attack is at its height, any movement of my head gives me almost unendurable pain, and all I can do is lie in a dark room and hope to die. until it gradually fades away.
One midweek day I was at the bank when the megrims hit. It was a hot, sultry June day, with rain not far away, and I was working through the early morning on a complicated transaction to buy dyestuffs from Germany for a large hosiery manufactury in Nottingham. The problem was to avoid paying three separate customs dues between Leipzig and Antwerp, and I was casting around for solutions. As I worked I could feel the tension grow in the back of my neck, and a band tightening painfully around my head, and I knew that an attack was coming. I worked on, trying to get the paperwork for the proposal finished whilst I was still capable, but at mid-morning, the chief clerk came over to my desk, looked at me carefully, and said:
"You had better go home Cowell, for all the good it would do for you to remain here. I'd better send the boy out to hail a cab for you."
He was right. Whilst he sent the boy for a cab, I wrote a brief note to give to my landlady when I got home, for I knew that by then I should be in no condition to explain.
The Hansom cab took me quickly to my lodgings. Blinded by the light I staggered up the steps, thrust the note into the hands of the girl, and tottered the few steps to sit on the stairs. A minute or two later, willing hands led me to my darkened bedroom, and I collapsed onto the bed.
