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Make haste, now; these stewards must not be kept waiting!" The old woman gave the dwarf a push, and he hurried back to Ani, while she carried the child, tied to his board, into the cave, and threw the sack over him. A few minutes later the Regent stood before her.
Ani feigned great astonishment, and agreed with the high-priest that Paaker should not for the present be informed of his true origin. "He is a strangely constituted man," said Ameni, "and he is not incapable of playing us some unforeseen trick before he has done his part, if he is told who he is."
"Hail to your highness!" she cried, half in joke half reverently, and she raised her hands in supplication, as if he already wore the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. "Have the nine Gods met you? have the Hathors kissed you in your slumbers? This is a white day a lucky day I read it in your face!" "That is reading a cipher!" said Ani gaily, but with dignity. "Read this despatch."
You use words instead of swords, traps instead of lances, and you cast not our bodies, but our souls, into irons." "Do you blame or praise us for it?" said the widow. "We are in any case not impotent allies, and therefore, it seems to me, desirable ones." "Indeed you are," said Ani smiling.
The Greeks adopted the idea, but beautified it, using a winged Genius of death instead of a mummy. Gagabu gave another signal, and the Regent's steward brought in the wine from Byblos. Ani was much lauded for the wonderful choiceness of the liquor. "Such wine," exclaimed the usually grave chief of the pastophori, "is like soap." Kisra called wine "the soap of sorrow."
When, half-an-hour later, the brother and sister returned to the young wife, two graceful garlands hung in Nefert's bands, one for the grave of the dead queen, and one for Mena's mother. "I will carry over the wreaths, and lay them in the tombs," cried the prince. "Ani thought it would be better that we should not show ourselves to the people," said his sister.
"Hail to Ani, the son of the Sun!" cried the dwarf kissing the Regent's foot. "Have I no letter to carry to my mistress Nefert?" "Greet her from me," replied the Regent. "Tell Katuti I will visit her after the next meal. The king's charioteer has not written, yet I hear that he is well. Go now, and be silent and discreet."
The Regent had admitted him to a private interview, and the little man had soon succeeded in riveting his attention; Ani had laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks at Nemu's description of Paaker's wild passion, and he had proved himself in earnest over the dwarf's further communications, and had met his demands half-way.
Behind Ani's pavilion stood a tent, enclosed in a wall or screen of canvas, within which old Hekt was lodged; Ani had secretly conveyed her hither on board his own boat. Only Katuti and his confidential servants knew who it was that lay concealed in the mysteriously shrouded abode.
Nothing is wanting to thy feast, most lordly Ani, but a poet, who might sing the glorious deeds of our monarch to the sound of his lute, and yet we have at hand the gifted Pentaur, the noblest disciple of the House of Seti."
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