"Be careful how you open up the ashes of old Amenotaph. I don't see how he can keep the pesky things around. Makes me think of Eliza Ann Gifford, after the Deacon died. She had his ashes in a little bronze, brown box on the front room mantel, and fresh flowers on 'em every day of her life. Used to give one a fearful turn every time they called on her. So far as I'm concerned, I'm perfectly willing to wait for Gabriel's last trump to let my dust and ashes rest in a decent grave.
"If I were you, Kit, I'd have a heart-to-heart talk with the Dean himself, and I know your mother will be just as relieved as can be to hear you're homeward bound."
CHAPTER XX
HOGS AND HORACE
Kit was delighted over the whole spirit of the letter, and went directly to the Dean with its message. He was deeply engrossed in getting up his first notes and commentaries on the urn and statue. It had not seemed for the past two or three weeks as if he resided any longer in Delphi at all. Kit told Miss Daphne she was positive he was wandering through Egypt all the time, the Egypt of five thousand years ago. And it was only the shadow of his self that seemed to sit closeted for hours in the study.
He hardly glanced up now as she came in, but smiled and nodded when he saw who it was, keeping on with his writing.
"Just hand me that volume on the second shelf to your right by the door. Second volume, 'Explorations in Upper Egypt.' Look up Seti I in the index."
Kit found the place and laid it before him, perching herself on one end of the desk, as she always did when she wanted to attract his attention. The little statuette of Annui smiled grotesquely down upon her from its pedestal. The urn stood in a handy place of honor upon the desk itself as the Dean had been deciphering the inscriptions upon it.
"I hate to disturb you, Uncle Cassius," Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, "but I really think I ought to go back home. You've been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I've enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough. It's time for me to get back to the firing line, because mother needs me."