'And what if I best you, me dear? What will you give me?' Ikey liked the idea of a challenge and the ferret grin appeared upon his face.
Mary smiled and her pale countenance was momentarily most pleasantly transformed, for she had an even smile that would light up her face and cause her lovely green eyes to dance, though this was beyond the ability of Ikey to notice. Po-faced once more, Mary stooped to lift the hems of her skirt and the two dirty calico petticoats beneath to just above her thighs. What Ikey witnessed was a pair of shapely legs quite unencumbered.
'It is all I 'ave to give, but I know meself clean, sir,' she said, trying to imagine herself a respectable though destitute widow so that her words carried sufficient pathos.
'Ha! Clean by your own word! Trustworthy by your own word! Bah! Not good enough for the master o' the 'ouse to pay for, but good enough for me, is that it, eh?'
Ikey, who had been standing in front of Mary now moved over to his clerk's desk. He removed the ledger from it and placed it on the ground, then reaching for a piece of paper from a small stack placed beside where the ledger had been he laid it squarely in the centre of the desk-top. Then he fumbled briefly within the recesses of his coat and produced a pair of spectacles which he took some time to arrange about his nose and hook behind his large hairy ears. Then he removed the coat and hung it upon the coat-stand.
The absence of his coat made Ikey look decidedly strange, as though he had been partly skinned or plucked. Mary was surprised at how tiny he appeared standing in his dirty embroidered waist-coat and coarse woollen undershirt beneath. It was almost as though Ikey wore the heavily padded great coat, which stretched down to touch the uppers of his snouted boots giving the effect of a much larger man, to conceal from the world his diminutive size. That he should choose to remove it now so that he could more rapidly move his arms to write indicated to Mary that he had taken her challenge seriously. Or, otherwise thought so little of her presence that he cared nothing for her opinion of his physical stature or the rank, ripe cheesy odour which came from his tiny body as he climbed upon the stool and hunched over his desk.
Ikey glanced scornfully at Mary over his spectacles as he took up his quill.
'You shall 'ave your challenge, my dear, and if you win, which I very much doubt, I shall make enquiries as to your past.' Ikey paused and shrugged his shoulders. 'If you pass you shall 'ave your billet, you 'ave me word for it.'
Mary laughed. 'And your word, it is to be trusted and mine is not, sir?'
Ikey did not reply, nor even look up, but he liked the point and the boldness it took to make it. He turned away from Mary's direction and briefly rubbed the tip of the quill with his thumb and forefinger, testing its sharpness, whereupon he dipped it into an inkwell and dabbed its point on the blotter which lay beside it.
'But if you lose…' Ikey looked down at the area of her skirt, now once again concealing her legs, and pointed the tip of his goose quill at its hemline. 'Lift, my dear, lift, lift, a little 'igher if you please!'
As Mary's skirts rose slowly to her thighs, she tried desperately to remember some past incident of embarrassment so that she would appear to flush with modesty. Instead she felt herself growing angry and fought to contain her temper while her face remained impassive. 'Now turn around, my dear, right around, that's it! Now lift, 'igher… Ah!' Mary now stood with her back to Ikey. 'That will do very nicely, my dear,' his voice grown suddenly hoarse. 'You may turn around again, though keep your skirt raised if you please.'
Mary's face was a deep purple as she beat back her rising anger. The display of her buttocks and now her cunny did not dismay her, it was the feeling of complete powerlessness which angered her. She was at Ikey's mercy. The billet he was empowered to give her could mean the beginning of a new life for her, but if he summarily dismissed her, she felt certain that she would not survive. She dropped her hands from her skirts and did not look directly at Ikey for fear her eyes might betray her anger.
'Ah, you 'ave done well to flush, my dear. A touch of modesty is most becoming in a laundry woman, even in a poor widow what 'as lost 'er darlin'
'usband and precious little ones, the one in water, the terrible stormy briny and t'others in a roastin' pit, the crackle o' hell itself!' Ikey paused and smiled his ferret smile. 'Perhaps you will make a modest clerk, a very modest clerk, so modest as not to be a clerk at all but altogether something else, eh? What do you say, my dear?'
'I shall be most pleased if you would give me your calculation, sir,' Mary said quietly. She kept her eyes averted, fearing that should she glance up she might lose control and spoil her chance to take him on at calculations.
Ikey leaned backwards in the high chair showing a surprisingly large erection through his tightly pulled breeches. He was most gratified at this unexpected event. He could not remember when he'd been so encouraged by a woman's display of immodesty, especially a woman such as the one who stood before him. Women and sex seldom entered his mind. He had thought simply to humiliate Mary and to erode her confidence before the contest by showing her he knew her to be a whore, yet she had stirred a part in him so seldom stirred that he had almost forgotten that it was possessed of a secondary purpose beyond pissing.
Ikey looked down at his swelling breeches with some approval, then looked up at Mary with a mixture of pleasure and fear. If anything, this woman, with her ridiculous contraption of wire and beads, had gained the upper hand and he knew he must do something at once to regain the advantage. The thought of losing to her caused an immediate diminishing within his breeches, but upon his becoming aware of this, the perverse monster came alive again, pushing hard against the cotton of his breeches.
Ikey concentrated desperately and cast his thoughts to embrace his wife Hannah, an act of mental flagellation which was at once sufficient to damp down the unaccustomed fire that burned in the region of his crotch.
Waving the goose feather quill in an expansive gesture above his head, Ikey announced to Mary, 'If you should lose, do not despair, my dear. Mrs Solomon, a woman of a most benign nature and generous heart, who 'erself is an expert on,' Ikey coughed lightly, '… er, figures… is in need of someone capable of your very well-presented, ah, hum… figurations'
Ikey moved forward, leaning both his elbows on the desk so that the area of his loins was concealed. His bony shoulders were hunched up above his ears to make him look like an Indian vulture bird. 'You will do very nicely, my dear, very nicely indeed, my wife will be most pleased to make your acquaintance!' Ikey felt immediately better for knowing what Hannah might do to the woman who stood before him should she lose to him.
Mary remained silent nor did she change her expression, though she was acquainted with Hannah's vile reputation and Ikey's insidious suggestions were not lost on her.
'I shall need a surface upon which to place down me abacus,' was all she said in reply.
Ikey motioned her to a small table and chair and Mary seated herself, placing the brightly beaded abacus at the required distance in front of her. Her voice was hardly above a whisper. 'I am ready please, sir.'
'Mmph!' Ikey said in a tight voice. 'Ready you may be, but beat me you shan't, not now, not never and not likely!'
It is a matter of history how Ikey threw all sorts of mathematical computations at Mary and before he could properly ink his quill her flying fingers sped the coloured beads this way and that to find the answer. This she announced in a steady voice free of emotion, fearing to upset Ikey if she appeared too bold and forward with her triumph over him.