"How understanding you are," marveled Boots. "You may begin," he said to the concealed girl.
The robes shook violently, negatively.
"What is wrong?" asked the Bina.
"She is shy," said Boots.
"The slave need not be shy on my account," said the Bina. "Let her begin."
"Begin," said Boots.
The robes again shook violently.
"Begin," he said.
Again there seemed a great commotion beneath his robes.
Boots then, with the flat of his hand, with some force, cuffed the girl concealed under his robes. Instantly she knelt quietly. "Lazy girl, naughty girl," chided Boots. The tops of her toes, as she knelt, beat up and down in helpless frustration. "I see that I shall have to draw you forth and beat you," she said.
"Look!" cried the Bina. "She begins!"
"Oh, she does, doesn't she?" said Boots. "Oh, yes!"
"What a slave she is!" cried the Bina. "How exciting! How exciting!"
"To be sure," agreed Boots. "Ah! Yes! Ohhh! To be sure! Eee! Yes! Quite! Oh! Yes! Oh! Oh! To be sure! Eee! Yes! Oh! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Ohhh, yes, yes, yes." Boots then wiped his brow with his sleeve.
"Has she gone?" called out the Brigella, after a time, her voice muffled from beneath his robes.
"Yes," said Boots.
The Brigella, as the Lady Phoebe, extricated herself, on her knees, from the robes of Boots Tarsk-Bit. She turned about, still on her knees. "Tipa!" she cried in horror.
"I thought you had gone," said Boots.
"Phoebe!" cried the Lady Tipa.
"Tipa," moaned Phoebe, in misery.
"Phoebe!" cried the Lady Tipa, in delight.
"Tipa!" pleaded Phoebe.
"Phoebe on her knees, as naked as a slave, on a public road, crawling out of a man's robes!" laughed the Bina, pointing derisively at her. "How shameful, how outrageous, how marvelous, how delicious, how glorious!"
"Please, Tipa," pleaded Phoebe.
"You are the sort of girl who should have been whipped and collared at puberty!" said the Bina.
The free woman in the audience stiffened at these words. These words seemed to have some special meaning for her. She shook her head and clenched her small fists in the blue gloves.
"You have always been a slave," said the Bina.
"I am a free woman," wailed the Brigella.
"Slave, slave, slave!" laughed the Bina. "This story will bear a rich retelling in the village," she said hurrying away.
"I am ruined," wailed the Brigella, rising to her feet, wringing her hands. "I cannot bear now to return to the village and, if I did, they would put a chain on me and sell me."
"Perhaps not," said Boots, soothingly.
"Do you not think so, sir?" she asked.
"It might be a rope," he said.
"Ohhhhh," she wailed. "Where can I go? What can I do?"
"Well," said Boots, "I must be on my way."
"But what shall I do?" she asked.
"Try to avoid being eaten by sleen," said Boots. "It is growing dark."
"Where are my clothes?" she begged.
"I do not see them em about," said Boots. "They must have blown away."
"Take me with you!" she begged.
"Perhaps you would like to kneel and beg my collar?" he asked. "I might then consider whether or not I find you pleasing enough to lock it on your neck."
"Sir," she cried, "I am a free woman!"
"Good luck with the sleen," he said.
"Accept me as a traveling companion," she urged.
"And what would you do, to pay your way on the road?" he asked.
"I could give you a kiss, on the cheek, once a day," she said. "Surely you could not expect more from a free woman."
"Good luck with the sleen." said he.
"Do not go," she begged. "I am willing, even, to enter into the free companionship with you!"
Boots staggered backwards, as though overwhelmed. "I could not dream of accepting a sacrifice of such enormity on your part!" he cried.
"I will. I will!" she cried.
"But I suspect," said Boots, suspiciously, musingly, regarding her, "that there may be that in you which is not really of the free companion."
"Sir?" she asked.
"Perhaps you are, in actuality, more fittingly understood as something else," he mused.
"What can you mean, sir?" she asked.
"Does it not seem strange that you would have fallen madly in love with me at just this moment?"
"Why, no, of course not," she said.
"Perhaps you are merely trying to save yourself from sleen," he mused.
"No, no," she assured him.
"I fear that you are tricking me," he said.
"No!" she said.
"In any event," he said, "you surely cannot expect me to consider you seriously in connection with the free companionship."
"Why not?" she asked, puzzled.
"A naked woman," he asked, skeptically, "encountered beside a public road?"
"Oh!" she cried in misery.
"Do you have a substantial dowry?" he asked. "An extensive wardrobe, wealth, significant family connections, a high place in society?"
"No!" she said. "No! No!"
"And if you return to your village I think you will find little waiting for you there but a rope collar and a trip in a sack to the nearest market."
"Misery!" she wept.
"Besides," he said, "in your heart you are truly a slave."
"No!" she cried.
"Surely you know that?" he asked.
"No!" she cried.
"I do not even think you saw the wondrous veil," he said.
"I saw it," she said. "I saw it!"
"What was its predominant color?" he asked, sharply.
"Yellow," she said.
"No," he said.
"Red!" she said.
"No!" he said.
"Blue, pink, orange, green!" she cried.
"Apparently you are a slave," he said, grimly. "You should not have tried to masquerade as a free woman. There are heavy penalties for that sort of thing."
She put her head in her hands, sobbing.
"I wonder if I should turn you over to magistrates," he said.
"Please, do not!" she wept.
"I will give you another chance," he said, reaching behind his back, to where he had supposedly hidden the veil at the first sight of the supposed brigands. "Now," he said, thrusting forth his hands, "in which hand is it?"
"The right!" she cried.
"No!" he said.
"The left!" she wept.
"No," he said, "it is in neither hand. I left it behind my back!"
"Oh, oh!" she wept.
"On your knees, Slave," he said, sternly.
Swiftly she knelt, in misery.
"Do not fret, girl," said Boots. "Surely you know that you have slave curves."
"I do?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "In any event, you are far too beautiful to be a mere free companion."
"I am?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "Your beauty, if you must know, is good enough to be that of a slave."
Here several of the men in the audience shouted their agreement.
"Is it?" she asked, laughing.
"Yes," said Boots, struggling to keep a straight face.
"Good!" laughed the Brigella.
There was more laughter from the audience.
"Mind your characterizations!" called the free woman in the audience.
"Forgive me, Lady," said Boots, trying not to laugh.
"Forgive me, Mistress," said the Brigella.
"Continue," said the free woman.
"Are you in charge of the drama?" inquired a man.
The free woman did not deign to respond to him.
"Will you not then accept me as a free companion, noble sir?" called the Brigella to Boots, in his guise as the merchant.
"It is the collar for you, or nothing," said Boots, grandly.
There was a cheer from the men in the audience.
"Though I may be a slave in my heart," cried the Brigella, leaping to her feet, "I am surely not a legal slave and thus, as yet, am bond to neither you nor any man!"