It was very hot in the tent, and not one of the girls spoke a word; they sat perfectly still before the old woman, and did not stir a finger, excepting now and then to take up one of the porous clay pitchers, which stood on the ground, for a draught of water, or to put a pill of Kyphi between their painted lips.
Various musical instruments leaned against the walls of the tent, hand-drums, pipes and lutes and four tambourines lay on the ground; on the vellum of one slept a cat, whose graceful kittens played with the bells in the hoop of another.
An old negro-woman went in and out of the little back-door of the tent, pursued by flies and gnats, while she cleared away a variety of earthen dishes with the remains of food--pomegranate-peelings, breadcrumbs, and garlic-tops--which had been lying on one of the carpets for some hours since the girls had finished their dinner.
Old Hekt sat apart from the girls on a painted trunk, and she was saying, as she took a parcel from her wallet: "Here, take this incense, and burn six seeds of it, and the vermin will all disappear--" she pointed to the flies that swarmed round the platter in her hand. "If you like I will drive away the mice too and draw the snakes out of their holes better than the priests."
[Recipes for exterminating noxious creatures are found in the papyrus in my possession.] "Keep your magic to yourself," said a girl in a husky voice. "Since you muttered your words over me, and gave me that drink to make me grow slight and lissom again, I have been shaken to pieces with a cough at night, and turn faint when I am dancing."
"But look how slender you have grown," answered Hekt, "and your cough will soon be well."
"When I am dead," whispered the girl to the old woman. "I know that most of us end so."
The witch shrugged her shoulders, and perceiving the dwarf she rose from her seat.
The girls too noticed the little man, and set up the indescribable cry, something like the cackle of hens, which is peculiar to Eastern women when something tickles their fancy. Nemu was well known to them, for his mother always stayed in their tent whenever she came to Thebes, and the gayest of them cried out: "You are grown, little man, since the last time you were here."
"So are you," said the dwarf sharply; "but only as far as big words are concerned."