able in the male; colouration was different
also. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them their
crouching gait--but I wander from my subject.[1]

They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with interest.

"You surely have those things well trained, Lakla," he said.

"Things!" The handmaiden arose, eyes flashing with indignation. "You
call my _Akka_ things!"

"Well," said Larry, a bit taken aback, "what do you call them?"

"My _Akka_ are a _people_," she retorted. "As much a people as your race
or mine. They are good and loyal, and they have speech and arts, and
they slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I think
them beautiful, Larry, _beautiful_!" She stamped her foot. "And you call
them--_things_!"

Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesque
fashion. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from babyhood, they were
not strange, at all. Why shouldn't she think them beautiful? The same
thought must have struck O'Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.

"I think them beautiful, too, Lakla," he said remorsefully. "It's my
not knowing your tongue too well that traps me. _Truly_, I think them
beautiful--I'd tell them so, if I knew their talk."

Lakla dimpled, laughed--spoke to the attendants in that strange speech
that was unquestionably a language; they bridled, looked at O'Keefe
with fantastic coquetry, cracked and boomed softly among themselves.

"They say they like _you_ better than the men of Muria," laughed Lakla.

"Did I ever think I'd be swapping compliments with lady frogs!" he
murmured to me. "Buck up, Larry--keep your eyes on the captive Irish
princess!" he muttered to himself.

"Rador goes to meet one of the _ladala_ who is slipping through with
news," said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food.
"Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the _Akka_--for there will
be battle, and we must prepare. Nak," she added, "is he who went
before me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry." She stole a
swift, mischievous glance at him. "He is headman of all the _Akka_."

"Just what forces can we muster against them when they come, darlin'?"
said Larry.

"Darlin'?"--the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word--"what's
that?"

"It's a little word that means Lakla," he answered. "It does--that
is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry."

"I like that word," mused Lakla.

"You can even say Larry darlin'!" suggested O'Kee