She made no further answer and bowed her head, feeling that he did not count her words as more than a well-sounding speech:
“Have I your permission, my lord, to go back to the barge?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “go.”
She made a gesture of graceful reverence and moved away. He followed her at a distance. She walked along by the tall reeds of the river. She was very pretty and dainty, like the soft-tinted statuettes that came from Tanagra. Her flowered muslin peplos hung limply pleated around her shapely body in a succession of thin folds, which blew open and shut. Her bare arms were very slender. Her blue-black hair was fine and caught golden gleams. Now, while she stopped to pluck a flowering reed, she stood among the stems like a nymph.
And Lucius smiled because she was so very pretty, so tenderly winsome, because she sang and played the harp so very beautifully and because she said such civil words and had spoken so charmingly of her native island, Cos, where she was born in Dryope’s slave-school.
Chapter XX
Uncle Catullus lay under the awning of the thalamegus and asked Cora to come and sit by him:
“Sing and play me some cheerful songs, Cora,” he said. “Be kind to me even though I be not your master. For I feel bored here, on this Nile boat, at Memphis. I have been bored ever since Lucius went to the oracle of Ammon, through the barren desert. What an idea, what a mad idea! They have been gone five days now; they will probably arrive to-morrow.... I am bored, Cora, I am horribly bored. Egypt will be the death of me! First I am saturated with new impressions, like a sponge with water, and then Lucius abandons me to unlimited boredom. He’s an egoist; he never thinks of his old uncle.... Cora, be amiable to me and sing and play me some cheerful songs, won’t you?”
This was the burden of Uncle Catullus’ complaint. As he said, Lucius had gone through the desert to the oracle of Ammon, with Caleb, Thrasyllus and Tarrar, with guards and drivers, and Uncle Catullus had remained behind on the barge, under the care of Rufus the under-steward, with all the other slaves, male and female.