“How shall we prevent your people telling everyohat you’ve got a visitor — dresd like a beggar’s brat — in your hou? It might so easily get round to my father.”
“Now don’t keep on fussing, there’s a dear,” said Lasaraleen. “We’ll get you some proper clothes in a moment. And here we are！”
The bearers had stopped and the litter was being lowered. When the curtains had been drawn Aravis found that she was in a courtyard-garden very like the ohat Shasta had been taken into a few minutes earlier in another part of the city. Lasaraleen would have gone indoors at o Aravis reminded her in a frantic whisper to say something to the slaves about not telling anyone of their mistress’s strange visitor.
“Sorry, darling, it had ght out of my head,” said Lasareleen. “Here. All of you. And you, doorkeeper. No one is to be let out of the hou today. And anyone I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that be kept on bread and water for six weeks. There.”
Although Lasaraleen had said she was dying to hear Aravis’s story, she showed no sign of really wanting to hear it at all. She was, in fact, much better at talking than at listening. She insisted on Aravis having a long and luxurious bath （ehs are famous） and then dressing her up in the fi clothes before she would let her explain anything. The fuss she made about choosing the dress nearly drove Aravis mad. She remembered now that Lasaraleen had always been like that, ied in clothes and parties and gossip. Aravis had always been more ied in bows and arrows and hors and dogs and swimming. You will guess that each thought the other silly. But when at last they were both ated after a meal （it was chiefly of the whipped cream and jelly and fruit and ice sort） in a beautiful pillared room （which Aravis would have liked better if Lasaraleen’s spoiled pet monkey hadn’t been climbing about it all the time） Lasaraleen at last asked her why she was running away from home.