“Ay, idols. Some the size of your thumb, and some the size of bedposts, which they were derived from; some with teeth, and some with hair, and some bald as a bannock. We stocked half West Africa with idols, and the South Seas absorbed the balance.”
“Well, you certainly take the cake,” said Leslie.
“I took three pun ten a week at Macbean’s, and learnt more eelementary theology than’s taught in the schules of Edinboro’. Macbean said artistical idols was what the savages wanted, and what they would get as long as old bedposteses were to be bought at knockdown prices, and sold for the waurth of elephants’ tusks.”
“You disgust me,” said Leslie, “upon my word you do.”
“That’s what Macbean said one day to the boddie I had in mind when I began telling you of this. The boddie came in grumbling about a mummy—a vara fine mummy it was, too—that had been sold to him for export. The mummy had been stuftit with newspapers, but the sachrum ustum used for coloring the stuffing matter being omitted, the printed matter remained in eevidence when the American who bought the article in Cairo opened it to hunt for amulets and scarabeuses. ‘Newspapers!’ said Macbean. ‘And what more do you expect in a fifty-shullin’ mummy? Did y’ expect it stuffed wi’ dimonds?’”
“Well?” said Leslie.
“That’s all, and that’s the whole of beesiness in a walnut shell; y’ canna expect a fifty-shullin’ mummy to be stuffed with—”
“Rubbish! the whole of swindling, you mean. Anyhow, we’ll keep straight, if you please; a fair profit I don’t mind, but I object to rank trickery—by the way, what’s the time? my watch has stopped; and how far is Nikko off?”
“It’s after two,” said Mac, who had no very definite idea of how far Nikko might be off, having led his companion by the wrong road and concealed the fact. “And Nikko is maybe twarree miles, maybe a bit more—wull we go?”
For all answer Leslie took some bar-chocolate from his pocket, gave some to his companion, and proceeded to lunch.