I must be back in
the trap before sunset. Excuse me, Katuti, so we call the school. Here
comes your little Nemu."

The brother and sister left the garden.

As soon as the ladies, who accompanied them, had turned their backs,
Bent-Anat grasped her brother's hand with unaccustomed warmth, and said:

"Avoid all imprudence; but your demand is just, and I will help you with
all my heart."

CHAPTER XI.

As soon as Bent-Anat had quitted Mena's domain, the dwarf Nemu entered
the garden with a letter, and briefly related his adventures; but in such
a comical fashion that both the ladies laughed, and Katuti, with a lively
gaiety, which was usually foreign to her, while she warned him, at the
same time praised his acuteness. She looked at the seal of the letter and
said:

"This is a lucky day; it has brought us great things, and the promise of
greater things in the future." Nefert came close up to her and said
imploringly: "Open the letter, and see if there is nothing in it from
him."

Katuti unfastened the wax, looked through the letter with a hasty glance,
stroked the cheek of her child, and said:

"Perhaps your brother has written for him; I see no line in his
handwriting."

Nefert on her side glanced at the letter, but not to read it, only to
seek some trace of the well-known handwriting of her husband.

Like all the Egyptian women of good family she could read, and during the
first two years of her married life she had often--very often--had the
opportunity of puzzling, and yet rejoicing, over the feeble signs which
the iron hand of the charioteer had scrawled on the papyrus for her whose
slender fingers could guide the reed pen with firmness and decision.

She examined the letter, and at last said, with tears in her eyes:

"Nothing! I will go to my room, mother."

Katuti kissed her and said, "Hear first what your brother writes."

But Nefert shook her head, turned away in silence, and disappeared into
the house.

Katuti was not very friendly to her son-in-law, but her heart clung to
her handsome, reckless son, the very image of her lost husband, the
favorite of women, and the gayest youth among the young nobles who
composed the chariot-guard of the king.

How fully he had written to-day--he who weilded the reed-pen so
laboriously.

This really was a letter; while, usually, he only asked in the fewest
words for fresh funds for the gratification of his extravagant tastes.

This time she might look