"I was pleasant to her, of course, because I thought it would bring me quicker to you, darlin'." She looked at him doubtfully; then-- "I think you must have been _very_--pleasant!" was all she said--and leaning, kissed him forgivingly straight on the lips.

An extremely direct maiden was Lakla, with a truly sovereign contempt for anything she might consider non-essentials; and at this moment I decided she was wiser even than I had thought her.
He stumbled, feet vanishing; reached down and picked up something that in the grasping turned his hand to air.
"One of the invisible cloaks," he said to me.

"There must be quite a lot of them about--I guess Yolara brought her full staff of murderers.
They're a bit shopworn, probably--but we're considerably better off with 'em in our hands than in hers.

And they may come in handy--who knows ?" There was a choking rattle at my feet; half the head of a dwarf raised out of vacancy; beat twice upon the floor in death throes; fell back.
Lakla shivered; gave a command.

The frog-men moved about; peering here and there; lifting unseen folds revealing in stark rigidity torn form after form of the priestess's men.
Lakla had been right--her _Akka_ were thorough fighters! She called, and to her came the frog-woman who was her attendant.