“Ugh!” Mrs. Jasher’s handkerchief went again to her mouth.  “Say no more, Professor; your dish sounds horrid.  I don’t wish to eat it, and be turned into a mummy before my time.”

“You would make a really beautiful mummy,” said Braddock, paying what he conceived was a compliment; “and, should you die, I shall certainly attend to your embalming, if you prefer that to cremation.”

“You dreadful man!” cried the widow, turning pale and shrinking.  “Why, I really believe that you would like to see me packed away in one of those disgusting coffins.”

“Disgusting!” cried the outraged Professor, striking one of the brilliantly tinted cases.  “Can you call so beautiful a specimen of sepulchral art disgusting?  Look at the colors, at the regularity of the hieroglyphics—­why, the history of the dead is set out in this magnificent series of pictures.”  He adjusted his pince-nez and began to read, “The Osirian, Scemiophis that is a female name, Mrs. Jasher—­who—­”

“I don’t want to have my history written on my coffin,” interrupted the widow hysterically, for this funereal talk frightened her.  “It would take much more space than a mummy case upon which to write it.  My life has been volcanic, I can tell you.  By the way,” she added hurriedly, seeing that Braddock was on the eve of resuming the reading, “tell me about your Inca mummy.  Has it arrived?”

The Professor immediately followed the false trail.  “Not yet,” he said briskly, rubbing his smooth hands, “but in three days I expect The Diver will be at Pierside, and Sidney will bring the mummy on here.  I shall unpack it at once and learn exactly how the ancient Peruvians embalmed their dead.  Doubtless they learned the art from—­”

“The Egyptians,” ventured Mrs. Jasher rashly.

Braddock glared.  “Nothing of the sort, dear lady,” he snorted angrily.  “Absurd, ridiculous!  I am inclined to believe that Egypt was merely a colony of that vast island of Atlantis mentioned by Plato.  There—­if my theory is correct—­ civilization begun, and the kings of Atlantis—­doubtless the gods of historical tribes—­governed the whole world, including that portion which we now term South America.”

“Do you mean to say that there were Yankees in those days?” inquired Mrs. Jasher frivolously.

The Professor tucked his hands under his shabby coattails and strode up and down the room warming his rage, which was provoked by such ignorance.

“Good heavens, madam, where have you lived?” he exclaimed explosively—­“are you a fool, or merely an ignorant woman?  I am talking of prehistoric times, thousands of years ago, when you were probably a stray atom embedded in the slime.”

“Oh, you horrid creature!” cried Mrs. Jasher indignantly, and was about to give Braddock her opinion, if only to show him that she could hold her own, when the door opened.

“How are you, Mrs. Jasher?” said Lucy, advancing.