ften sent me to the gardener with
a message to enquire after his son, and though the man is rough he is
kind. At first he was not friendly, but when he saw how much I liked
his flowers he grew fond of me, and set me to work to tie wreaths and
bunches, and to carry them to his customers. As we sat together, laying
the flowers side by side, he constantly told me something about his son,
and his beauty and goodness and wisdom. When he was quite a little boy
he could write poems, and he learned to read before any one had shown
him how. The high-priest Ameni heard of it and took him to the House of
Seti, and there he improved, to the astonishment of the gardener;
not long ago I went through the garden with the old man. He talked of
Pentaur as usual, and then stood still before a noble shrub with broad
leaves, and said, My son is like this plant, which has grown up close to
me, and I know not how. I laid the seed in the soil, with others that I
bought over there in Thebes; no one knows where it came from, and yet it
is my own. It certainly is not a native of Egypt; and is not Pentaur as
high above me and his mother and his brothers, as this shrub is above
the other flowers? We are all small and bony, and he is tall and slim;
our skin is dark and his is rosy; our speech is hoarse, his as sweet as
a song. I believe he is a child of the Gods that the Immortals have
laid in my homely house. Who knows their decrees?' And then I often saw
Pentaur at the festivals, and asked myself which of the other priests
of the temple came near him in height and dignity? I took him for a
God, and when I saw him who saved my life overcome a whole mob with
superhuman strength must I not regard him as a superior Being? I look up
to him as to one of them; but I could never look in his eyes as I do in
yours. It would not make my blood flow faster, it would freeze it in
my veins. How can I say what I mean! my soul looks straight out, and
it finds you; but to find him it must look up to the heavens. You are a
fresh rose-garland with which I crown myself--he is a sacred persea-tree
before which I bow."

Rameri listened to her in silence, and then said, "I am still young, and
have done nothing yet, but the time shall come in which you shall
look up to me too as to a tree, not perhaps a sacred tree, but as to a
sycamore under whose shade we love to rest. I am no longer gay; I will
leave you for I have a serious duty to fulfil. Pentaur is a complete
man, a