"Keep quiet, old woman, that's beyond you, you mind your beetles!" he grumbled, patting her on the shoulder with a smile, and his face suddenly became very kind and curiously like his wife's face in spite of the difference in their features; they seemed to be brother and sister: happily married couples often develop a likeness in their old age.
"The dead will have enough to live on, don't you fear; we, the living, might fare worse!" he added, gloomily.
He really was not much concerned about the dead. If a decree were issued forbidding people to eat and drink they would go on eating and drinking just as before; the same thing would happen about this decree: the living would not stop feeding the dead, for the very being of Egypt rested upon this, that the living and the dead had the same food, the same drink—the body and blood of Khonsu Osiris, the Son of God.
"I expect we shall have to bribe Aton's spies after all," Inioteph went on.
He did not like Khnum's fearlessness; like all servants who are a little too forward, he had the bad habit of frightening his master in order to gain importance in his eyes.
"They have sniffed out, the dogs, that in your honour's tomb two images of Amon have not been effaced. 'We must inspect it,' they say. And if they discover it, there will be trouble; they will spoil everything and defile the tomb or prosecute you—there will be no end to it!"
"How did they find out?" Khnum asked in surprise.
"Someone must have informed against you."
"Who could it have been? No stranger has seen it."
"It must have been one of your own people, then."