"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. Jasher, still furious, "and I don't care."
"Don't care: don't care, when I look forward to your helping me in my
lifework! As my wife--"
"I shall never be your wife," cried the widow, stamping again. "I
wouldn't be your wife for a thousand or a million pounds. Marry your
mummy, you horrid, red-faced, crabbed little--"
"Hush! hush!" whispered Lucy, taking the angry woman round the waist,
"you must make allowances for my father. He is so excited over his good
fortune that he--"
"I shall not make allowance," interrupted Mrs. Jasher angrily. "He
practically accuses me of stealing the mummy. If I did that, I must have
murdered poor Sidney Bolton."
"No, no," cried the Professor, wiping his red face. "I never hinted at
such a thing. But the mummy is in your garden."
"What of that? I don't know how it came there. Mr. Hope, surely you do
not support Professor Braddock in his preposterous accusation?"
"I bring no accusation," stuttered the Professor.
"Neither do I, Mrs. Jasher. You are excited now. Go in and sleep, and
to-morrow you will talk reasonably." This brilliant speech was from
Hope, and wrought Mrs. Jasher into a royal rage.
"Well," she gasped, "he asks me to be calm, as it I wasn't the very
calmest person here. I declare: oh, I shall be ill! Lucy," she seized
the girl's hand and dragged her towards the cottage, "come in and give
me red lavender. I shall be in bed for days and days and days. Oh, what
brutes men can be! But listen, you two horrors," she indicated Braddock
and Hope, as she pushed open the door, "if you dare to say a word
against me, I'll have an action for libel against you. Oh, dear me,
how very ill I feel! Lucy, darling, help me, oh, help me,
and--and--oh--oh--oh!" She flopped down on the threshold of her home
with a cry.