uers evil. But when Isis saw the bad wound, she pressed her son's
head to her bosom, and her heart was as sad as that of any poor human
mother that holds her suffering child in her arms. And she thought: 'How
easy it is to give wounds, and how hard it is to heal them!' and so she
wept; one tear after another fell on the earth, and wherever they wetted
the ground there sprang up a kindly healing plant."

"Isis is good!" cried a little girl opposite to her. Mother says Isis
loves children when they are good."

"Your mother is right," replied Nefert. "Isis herself has her dear little
son Horus; and every human being that dies, and that was good, becomes a
child again, and the Goddess makes it her own, and takes it to her
breast, and nurses it with her sister Nephthys till he grows up and can
fight for his father."

Nefert observed that while she spoke one of the women was crying. She
went up to her, and learned that her husband and her son were both dead,
the former in Syria, and the latter after his return to Egypt. "Poor
soul!" said Nefert. "Now you will be very careful, that the wounds of
others may be healed. I will tell you something more about Isis. She
loved her husband Osiris dearly, as you did your dead husband, and I my
husband Mena, but he fell a victim to the cunning of Seth, and she could
not tell where to find the body that had been carried away, while you can
visit your husband in his grave. Then Isis went through the land
lamenting, and ah! what was to become of Egypt, which received all its
fruitfulness from Osiris. The sacred Nile was dried up, and not a blade
of verdure was green on its banks. The Goddess grieved over this beyond
words, and one of her tears fell in the bed of the river, and immediately
it began to rise. You know, of course, that each inundation arises from a
tear of Isis. Thus a widow's sorrow may bring blessing to millions of
human beings."

The woman had listened to her attentively, and when Nefert ceased
speaking she said:

"But I have still three little brats of my son's to feed, for his wife,
who was a washerwoman, was eaten by a crocodile while she was at work.
Poor folks must work for themselves, and not for others. If the princess
did not pay us, I could not think of the wounds of the soldiers, who do
not belong to me. I am no longer strong, and four mouths to fill--"

Nefert was shocked--as she often was in the course of her new duties--and
begged Bent-Gnat to raise the wa