"
"There is no need to be rude to Archie, father," corrected Lucy
sharply.
"Rude! Rude! I am never rude. But this mummy." Braddock
peered closely at it and rapped the wood to assure himself it was
no phantom. "Yes! it is my mummy, the mummy of Inca Caxas. Now
I shall learn how the Peruvians embalmed their royal dead. Mine!
mine! mine!" He crooned like a mother over a child, caressing
the coffin; then suddenly drew himself upright and fixed Mrs.
Jasher with an indignant eye. "So it was you, madam, who stole
my mummy," he declared venomously, "and I thought of making you
my wife. Oh, what an escape I have had. Shame, woman, shame!"
Mrs. Jasher stared, then her face grew redder than the rouge on
her cheeks, and she stamped furiously in the neat Louis Quinze
slippers in which she had in judiciously come out.
"How dare you say what you have said?" she cried, her voice
shrill and hard with anger. "Mr. Hope has been saying the same
thing. Are you both mad? I never set eyes on the horrid thing
in my life. And only to-night you told me that you loved--"
"Yes, yes, I said many foolish things, I don't doubt, madam. But
that is not the question. My mummy! my mummy!" he rapped the
wood furiously--"how does my mummy come to be here?"
"I don't know," said Mrs.
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