"And Rui was prophet of the temple of Hatasu," added the joiner.
"The priests over there are all hangers-on of the old royal house, that I know," asserted a baker.
"That's no secret!" cried the cobbler. "The old times were better than these too. The war upsets everything, and quite respectable people go barefoot because they cannot pay for shoe-leather. Rameses is a great warrior, and the son of Ra, but what can he do without the Gods; and they don't seem to like to stay in Thebes any longer; else why should the heart of the sacred ram seek a new dwelling in the Necropolis, and in the breast of an adherent of the old--"
"Hold your tongue," warned the basket-maker. "Here comes one of the watch."
"I must go back to work," said the baker. "I have my hands quite full for the feast to-morrow."
"And I too," said the shoemaker with a sigh, "for who would follow the king of the Gods through the Necropolis barefoot."
"You must earn a good deal," cried the basket-maker. "We should do better if we had better workmen," replied the shoemaker, "but all the good hands are gone to the war. One has to put up with stupid youngsters. And as for the women! My wife must needs have a new gown for the procession, and bought necklets for the children. Of course we must honor the dead, and they repay it often by standing by us when we want it--but what I pay for sacrifices no one can tell. More than half of what I earn goes in them--"
"In the first grief of losing my poor wife," said the baker, "I promised a small offering every new moon, and a greater one every year. The priests will not release us from our vows, and times get harder and harder. And my dead wife owes me a grudge, and is as thankless as she was is her lifetime; for when she appears to me in a dream she does not give me a good word, and often torments me."
"She is now a glorified all-seeing spirit," said the basket-maker's wife, "and no doubt you were faithless to her. The glorified souls know all that happens, and that has happened on earth."
The baker cleared his throat, having no answer ready; but the shoemaker exclaimed: "By Anubis, the lord of the under-world, I hope I may die before my old woman! for if she finds out down there all I have done in this world, and if she may be changed into any shape she pleases, she will come to me every night, and nip me like a crab, and sit on me like a mountain."