"Lilias! Everard! We're cutting some papyrus, and Douglas is going to show me how to make it into parchment like the ancient Egyptians used to write on. Won't it be gorgeous? Don't you want some too?"
"Rather!" replied Lilias, appealing to Mr. Stacey, who promptly pulled out his penknife, and began to hack away at a stout stem on her behalf.
The lengths of papyrus which they bore off with them somewhat resembled thick pieces of rhubarb, and how these were ever going to be turned into writing materials was a puzzle to Dulcie, though Douglas assured her airily that he knew all about it. The elders of the party were glad to get the lively youngsters safely on dry land again.
"I thought Rosalia was going to turn into a water nymph," said Lilias, comparing notes afterwards with Dulcie. "She leaned over in the most dangerous manner, and so did Tito. If the boats hadn't been so broad, they would have capsized."
"Then Pluto would have bagged the whole lot of us! More than he quite bargained for, perhaps!" laughed Dulcie.
The making of the parchment was a matter of great interest to the Ingletons. With Douglas as an instructor, they all set to work on its manufacture. Taking ten inch lengths of the papyrus reeds, they cut them into long, thin, vertical slices, and laid these across each other in the form of a small mat between sheets of blotting paper. This was next squeezed through a wringing-machine to rid it of superfluous moisture, then placed under a heavy weight, in the manner of pressing flowers. When at last it was dry, the alternate layers of the papyrus had adhered together and amalgamated into a substance identical with the old Egyptian parchment, though much coarser and rougher in quality. The girls were delighted with it. They borrowed a book on Egypt from Mr. Greville's library, and copied little pictures of the Sphinx, scarabs, Ra, the Sun god, and other appropriate bits, painting them in bold colors on their pieces of parchment, and feeling as if they had gone back a few thousand years in history, and were dwellers in Memphis or some other great city on the banks of the Nile. They designed special ones for Miss Walters, Miss Hardy, and Miss Herbert, and smaller offerings for Gowan, Bertha, Phillida, Noreen, and others of their friends at Chilcombe Hall. Papyrus, indeed, became the rage at Casa Bianca. All the various cousins vied with one another in making the choicest specimens. They wrote letters to each other upon it, rolling up the parchments and tying them with ribbons in the manner of ancient scribes. Perhaps the whitest and best welded sheet of all was one made by Mr. Stacey, who turned out to be so clever at the new craze that he jokingly declared he must be a priest of some Egyptian temple come to life again. He used a reed pen, and got some very happy effects in hieroglyphs, puzzling out the names of each of the company in the curious picture writing of the days of the Pharaohs who reared the pyramids.
"Will you take us some day to see the Nile?" asked Lilias, happy in the possession of her name neatly pictured on the specially white sheet of papyrus, with a lotus bloom, the lily of Egypt, painted underneath. "You know Captain Porter said we ought to go to Alexandria!"
"Nothing would please me better, if the fates willed it!" smiled Mr. Stacey.
"We'll go in a party, and hire a boat up the Nile, and take all the Grevilles with us, specially Douglas," declared Dulcie. "I count them my cousins too. Don't you, Everard?"
"Right-o!" laughed Everard. "Cousins by all manner of means let them be!" ("Though I don't bargain to include the Trapani family among our new relations!" he added softly to himself, half under his breath).