Mary with little to do made the short trek to the reading room to occupy herself away from her parents. The reading room contained wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. She was mostly limited to one side of the room too, where the children's books were, but she was quickly approaching an age where she would impress her parents by picking up something more difficult and educational.
Mary liked many subjects, but she had a childish weakness for animals, plants, and food. Mary automatically drifted to a small section with some older cookbooks their kitchen staff wasn't using or whatever Mary asked them to borrow, and she kept them in here. She loved the pictures of the food the best but she also picked up a surprising amount of knowledge from these books. The ingredients alone helped her practice fractions and arithmetic, as well as teaching her about plants, utensils, and other items from around the world, and so forth. This made her parents proud enough to turn around and brag to their friends about how smart Mary was, even if they weren't sure where the knowledge was coming from. The kitchen was also proud of this. They definitely knew how Mary was learning, and they were proud of it. Mary was a darling to all of the chefs.
Almost everything came back to food for the well-fed child. She saw no reason to change things up today and thumbed through her favorite cookbook. In the desserts chapters, she'd found her favorite recipe - tres leches cake - and worked on memorizing it.
It didn't take long for Mary to make herself hungry doing this. Her belly rumbled quietly. My tummy is so cute when it cries, thought Mary, idly stroking her tummy. She liked feeling hungry as long as it wasn't too extreme because next, she would stuff herself, which felt even better, and her tummy made cute noises while it was digesting, too. She thought about what she wanted and called for Lucille.
"Lucille, bring me some cake," she ordered.
"Of course," Lucille responds immediately and departs for the kitchen. Despite Lucille's warning about not indulging minutes earlier, the kind, old maid often doted on the Partington's little girl the most herself. Lucille thought of her and cared for her like the granddaughter she never had. It was hard for her to say no to Mary about much, particularly food. It was no wonder how the girl who ate till bursting so often had quite the ravenous appetite. An appetite that only grew the more Mary challenged herself, the more food she packed down, and the older she got.
Mary's eyes went big when Lucille came back with a huge slice of the milk cake that she was reading about earlier. Lucille gave her the fork. Mary was starting to get hyper like, somehow, the little butterball was going to jump in the air and scream in joy!
Lucille stopped her by pressing a finger to Mary's lips. "Be careful not to stain your clothes," she said, "and we'll keep this snack our little secret." The maid pinches Mary's cheek affectionately and leaves.
Mary wasted no time and used the fork to shovel the cake in her mouth in large pieces. Mary sighed, having practically inhaled the cake.
She patted her tummy, already fondly remembering the treat. The cake sat heavily in her tummy though, and it felt good. She wanted more of it. There was no way that one piece was going to satisfy all of the hunger in the large girl, but the party was probably soon. "Ooof, I want more," Mary whines to herself. (Just outside and peeking through the door was Lucille, who giggled quietly to herself when she heard Mary. I overestimate how long that girl can go without food, Lucille told herself as she left to do something else.)
The more Mary stroked her stomach, the more things she found that she disliked. Her tummy was taught, and not the soft puddle of goo she liked to massage. She could feel the bones and lacing holding back a wall of fluff that normally stuck out in a beautiful, big, squishy ball. It dug in so tightly, she hated it.
Mary tried to take a deep breath. The pressure only made her hurt and made the corset groan with the effort of blubber trying to escape. "Stupid thing!" said Mary, fed up with it.
Mary was grumpy and just wanted to eat her way out of this thing.
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