his fifty-odd years of
scientific wear and tear. With a smooth, clean-shaven face, plentiful
white hair like spun silk, and neat feet and hands, he did not look his
age. The dreamy look in his small blue eyes was rather belied by the
hardness of his thin-lipped mouth, and by the pugnacious push of his
jaw. The eyes and the dome-like forehead hinted that brain without much
originality; but the lower part of this contradictory countenance might
have belonged to a prize-fighter. Nevertheless, Braddock's plumpness did
away to a considerable extent with his aggressive look. It was certainly
latent, but only came to the surface when he fought with a brother
savant over some tomb-dweller from Thebes. In the soft lamplight he
looked like a fighting cherub, and it was a pity--in the interests of
art--that the hairless pink and white face did not surmount a pair of
wings rather than a rusty and ill-fitting dress suit.

"He's nane sa dafty as he looks," thought Mrs. Jasher, who was Scotch,
although she claimed to be cosmopolitan. "With his mummies he is all
right, but outside those he might be difficult to manage. And these
things," she glanced round the shadowy room, crowded with the dead
and their earthly belongings. "I don't think I would care to marry the
British Museum. Too much like hard work, and I am not so young as I
was."

The near mirror--a polished silver one, which had belonged, ages ago, to
some coquette of Memphis--denied this uncomplimentary thought, for Mrs.
Jasher did not look a day over thirty, although her birth certificate
set her down as forty-five. In the lamplight she might have passed for
even younger, so carefully had she preserved what remained to her of
youth. She assuredly was somewhat stout, and never had been so tall
as she desired to be. But the lines of her plump figure were still
discernible in the cunningly cut gown, and she carried her little self
with such mighty dignity that people overlooked the mortifying height of
a trifle over five feet. Her features were small and neat, but her large
blue eyes were so noticeable and melting that those on whom she turned
them ignored the lack of boldness in chin and nose. Her hair was brown
and arranged in the latest fashion, while her complexion was so fresh
and pink that, if she did paint--as jealous women averred--she must
have been quite an artist with the hare's foot and the rouge pot and the
necessary powder puff.

Mrs. Jasher's clothes repaid the