The Green Mummy - Page 14/191

"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 thought she expended upon them, and

she was artistic in this as in other things. Dressed in a crocus-yellow

gown, with short sleeves to reveal her beautiful arms, and cut low to

display her splendid bust, she looked perfectly dressed. A woman would

have declared the wide-netted black lace with which the dress was draped

to be cheap, and would have hinted that the widow wore too many jewels

in her hair, on her corsage, round her arms, and ridiculously gaudy

rings on her fingers. This might have been true, for Mrs. Jasher

sparkled like the Milky Way at every movement; but the gleam of gold

and the flash of gems seemed to suit her opulent beauty. Her slightest

movement wafted around her a strange Chinese perfume, which she

obtained--so she said--from a friend of her late husband's who was in

the British Embassy at Pekin. No one possessed this especial perfume but

Mrs. Jasher, and anyone who had previously met her, meeting her in the

darkness, could have guessed at her identity. With a smile to show

her white teeth, with her golden-hued dress and glittering jewels, the

pretty widow glowed in that glimmering room like a tropical bird.

The Professor raised his dreamy eyes and laid the beetle on one side,

when his brain fully grasped that this charming vision was waiting to

be entertained. She was better to look upon even than the beloved

scarabeus, and he advanced to shake hands as though she had just entered

the room. Mrs. Jasher--knowing his ways--rose to extend her hand, and

the two small, stout figures looked absurdly like a pair of chubby

Dresden ornaments which had stepped from the mantelshelf.