“Awkward cat,” he cried, “do that again and you shall be flogged until your robe sticks to your back!”
“Pardon, mighty Lord,” she said, beginning to weep, “it was an accident; the wind caught my fan.”
“So the rod shall catch your skin, if you are not more careful, Merytra. Stop that snivelling and go send Kaku the Astrologer here. Go, both, I weary of the sight of your ugly faces.”
The girl rose, and with her fellow slave ran swiftly to the ladder that led to the waist of the ship.
“He called me a cat,” Merytra hissed through her white teeth to her companion. “Well, if so, Sekhet the cat-headed is my godmother, and she is the Lady of Vengeance.”
“Yes,” answered the other, “and he said that we were both ugly—we, whom every lord who comes near the Court admires so much! Oh! I wish a holy crocodile would eat him, black pig!”
“Then why don’t they buy us? Abi would sell his daughters, much more his fan-bearers—at a price.”
“Because they hope to get us for nothing, my dear, and what is more, if I can manage it one of them shall, for I am tired of this life. Have your fling while you can, I say. Who knows at which corner Osiris, Lord of Death, is waiting.”
“Hush!” whispered Merytra, “there is that knave of an astrologer, and he looks cross, too.”
Then, hand in hand, they went to this lean and learned man and humbly bowed themselves before him.