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Show Ah, but the lovely big girls! They would be set immediately, as soon as they could grasp a rattle in their chubby little hands, to developing those deltoids and biceps and triceps, schooled immediately in the art of shoving and kicking and swinging and running. For a good EightMonth Lusela had run all these things over in her mind and hoped against hope that if she had a boy, 'twould be small and runtish as was the other, her darling Hoqqam, whom all the other girl children adored and fought over for a playmate. "Ah, but pray Ida, if it be female...! If it be female, pray she be from that big ox in the RedDesert Kingdom, that big ox with the matted red hair and the freckles all over his chest a n d . . . . " She could hardly bring herself to think of him, but there! She was in a sore bind, and that rightly! And then, to compound the e v i l . .. " . . . h e has taken my little Hoqqam!" she screamed, "and left he in place of him none other than this!" And she turned her back on the poor little female wight lying beside her in a brightly colored Seljuk blanket and wept full heartily for several days. Meanwhile, the little babe was put out to a woman in the RedDesert as wet nurse and the search went on for Benji. Without success. In truth, Benji had become full tired of his ritual beatings, no matter that he was admired by all and sundry among the Seljuk women. And, though sneakish and thieving as he was of nature, the beatings were not all warranted, for the Seljuks were full sadistic toward their menfolk. Nine TwelveMonths went by, then Benji, back by then in the Eastern Kingdom, heard of the runtish girl's existence in a small clan of the RedDesert Kingdom. He perforce found her and stole her, too, for the young 111 |