Despite Janet's general air of bonhomie, the luncheon was not characterized by free and easy give-and-take among the women present. The three judges were clearly still embarrassed, realizing that the others had seen these august personages bend over a humiliating punishment block better suited to a Victorian workhouse, lift their skirts and display their panties, and then lower those to receive several strokes of the cane from a uniformed Senior Correctional Officer.
If those steps were not enough to embarrass the three lady jurists extraordinarily, the final imposition certainly accomplished that goal. Each one was ordered to lift her torso off the block, reach between her legs and hold her labia open, and receive two scorching "Mistress's Strokes" from the small strap which struck each on her open vulva.
These thoughts did register on Eleanor's mind as she contemplated the scene she had been privileged to witness. The entire imposition had been agreed to by the judges after it became known that technically, the shameful punishment they had visited upon Eleanor for her alleged adultery had been improper. The marriage Eleanor had been accused of violating did not exist and thus her punishment had been legally in error.
Eleanor knew she could embarrass the court by disclosing these facts publicly but also understood that to the women of the Women's Republic, she still would be regarded as an adulteress since she had not known at the time that her co-respondent was not actually married. So with her new job going well and having only just been admitted to the exclusive Victoria Club in her new city, she happily went along with the way her superior at the company and a woman who apparently had quite a great deal of authority and respect beyond the company and the city, Janet, had orchestrated the denouement of this situation.
The judges seemed a trifle embarrassed both to be lunching with the women who had witnessed their shame and to be present with the woman they had wrongfully sentenced to be punished so severely, and as a matter of law, erroneously.
Nevertheless, Judge Lesley, the outgoing blonde who had earned extra punishment for ignominiously losing control of her bladder during the caning, tried to carry on for the three.
"Janet, it's been quite some time since I for one had the pleasure of dining here," she said pleasantly, "and I must say that we don't have any place as charming as the Vic back in our capital city."
"Well, you know, Your Honor," Janet answered, deigning to use the honorific especially because she had just a few minutes earlier been presiding over the session during which the judge and her colleagues had been exposing their most private parts most humiliatingly to her gaze, "we feel we have managed to retain quite a bit of the best traditions here, even if in the old days, we as women were as subservient as elsewhere."
Janet was referring to the time before the proclamation of the Women's Republic, when men in effect controlled the country. Men were now truly second-class citizens in the state and even Eleanor, so harshly shamed just over a year previously, now was married and exercised the authority every married woman possessed now, as symbolized by the small marital cane she carried in her handbag.
Eleanor had not made great use of the cane as of yet, because she still felt not only love and affection for Jackson, her husband, who had married her despite her ignominious status and who moved with her to this city to start a new life, but because she had vowed to herself not to use the cane to dominate her husband merely because she could.
As the lunch party, which included the judges, Janet, Eleanor, Senior Correctional Officer Annette, and Janet's colleagues at Goose Cookers Company, CEO Deb and Chair Toni, wound down, each of the three judges made sure to stop by and quietly chat with Eleanor to convey their personal feelings of regret for what they had imposed on her but now had been punished for themselves.
"Dear Eleanor," Lesley said in a very quiet tone, "I do hope that we can put this behind us after a time, as I understand how you must feel. My feelings are in no way comparable"—and here the blonde judge blushed—"but I began to grasp merely the slightest bit of what you endured when I had to decide just now between two more cane strokes to my bare ass near my thighs or another stroke on my open pussy.
"And for me, dear," she went on, in a tone so quiet that it was not heard by the others, "you were hurt and I feel for you, but if it's shame, peeing like I did in that position gave me at least a tiny inkling of your torture. Please accept my very very sincere apology."
Eleanor realized that this was not standard behavior by a judge at any level and she quietly, as quietly as the apology had been rendered, responded to Judge Lesley that she truly appreciated her saying what she did.
"I know I was not without fault, either," she said openly to the blonde judge, "but now I do feel that you three have realized what going through even a few minutes of that kind of embarrassment means. Thank you again," and she smiled a wide smile that Lesley emulated in return.
Later that day, after the judges had left to return to the capital with Annette, Janet summoned Eleanor back to her office. She told Eleanor how proud she was of how Eleanor had behaved during this necessarily ticklish occasion.
"I'm very very pleased at how that went, Ellie," she began with a grin. "And I do hope you enjoyed seeing those three get whacked on their judicial wazoos," she added, almost laughing at her remark.
"Oh, I did, Janet, I did," Eleanor responded, "but I also appreciated their personally apologizing to me, especially what Lesley said. They are decent ladies, and maybe this experience has broadened their grasp of how they should behave in future."
"No question about that," Janet replied, "and where shall we head now that that's over?"
Eleanor understood that Janet was bringing things back to the company, and she remarked that the ad campaign for the new Silly Goose lingerie for ladies had been producing surging sales. Women apparently possessed enough confidence now to let down their hair and buy underwear that was juvenile—that even had the famous Silly Goose logo on the bras and panties—to wear themselves and consequently assume a lighter outlook.
"I do have yet another thought about extending this product line," Eleanor said brightly to her boss.
Janet looked up with expectant thoughts appearing across her usually impervious visage.
"I'm delighted that you haven't let yourself rest on your...should I say laurels or goose down?" she chuckled.
"I kept thinking about how we could use the 'What's Good for the Goose' line," Eleanor began. "Then I found myself thinking, 'Let's give women something fun they can use to exert their authority' and so I'm coming round to proposing that we produce some underwear for women to give the men in their lives."
"Oh?" said Janet, not entirely clear yet as to what her imaginative new colleague had in mind.
"Yes," Eleanor said, "we make underpants for men that look almost the same as panties and put the Silly Goose logo on them, so women will buy them and have the men wear them to show who's in charge and the line, 'What's Good for the Goose Now is Perfect for the Gander, Too' is a start for the campaign. We don't have to dwell on women getting these for any special reason, like punishment or embarrassment. It can be fun for them like the undies we're bringing out for women, but also the whole thing carries an undertone of the female dominance that the Women's Republic indeed supports if it doesn't always say so in so many words."
