At the word "Egyptians" quick comprehension dawned in Mrs. Sullivan's disapproving eyes. Certainly she had read her Bible.
"Shucks! Is them what you're talking about? Well, I can tell you, miss, I knew all about mummies before you was ever borned! But you talked about 'em so gushing that I thought of course they was some kind o' new-fangled ice-cream."
"When I said that I loved them I meant that they are so interesting, you know," Neva said, hoping to mollify her, but her explanation proved a poor quality of oil poured upon the troubled waters of maternal understanding.
"Them's strange things for a girl to be going to see," she commented with pointed brevity. "—Men, women and children layin' there without no clo'es on—and nobody not knowing what they died with!"
But the fires! I don't know whether there was an unusually large number of such calamities during this period or not, but I had never had my attention so attracted to them before.
We happened to find ourselves almost in the thick of one the very first day we were up in the shopping district, and the excitement so appealed to Neva that after that no member of the fire department could have taken a more lively interest in the clang of the bell than she did.
On the last night of Mrs. Sullivan's stay, when she was already weeping over having to leave her only born, there was such a sudden and close clang of the alarm as would furnish Edgar Allan Poe with inspiration enough for four more stanzas of "bells, bells, bells."
Neva listened, counted the strokes, then scrambled around distractedly for the alarm card. The fire might be near enough for her to see!
"Well, Nevar," her mother said, wiping her eyes and looking at her motions with reproach, "it is poorly worth while trying to educate you! You've been here a whole week and ain't learned the fire-alarm card yet!"