“Oh yes,” cried Rachel eagerly. “That’s just what I should like.”
“Prepare then to see nine, instead of one of these mighty works—eight of them built after this first Pyramid of King Cheops, but, even so, thousands of years old, and battered not so much by the hand of Time as by the hands of destructive men. Turn towards the river, child of To-day, and, with closed eyes, bow seven times.”
Rachel again obeyed, and, when she turned and looked, instead of one, a group of Pyramids stood up grandly against such a sunset sky as she had never before imagined. The sand of the desert, the flowing river, the worn sides of the huge buildings, were washed by a rosy glow. And battered and worn, as they now looked, they were still the Pyramids as they had stood for thousands and thousands of years before she was born.
Changed though it was, Rachel recognised at once the great tomb of King Cheops, and as she looked she listened to Sheshà speaking, though somehow the voice sounded faint and far away.
“All things dread Time, but Time itself dreads the Pyramids,” she heard him say. And then, after a moment, “Gaze well, O child, upon one of the Seven Wonders of the World.”
The last words came so faintly that Rachel turned to look at her friend—and instead found Miss Moore at her elbow.
She was still consulting her watch, and Rachel was still standing in front of the black Rosetta Stone.
“I think we ought to go,” said Miss Moore. “It will take us some time to get back, and we mustn’t be late for lunch.”
Rachel drew a long breath, and followed her governess in silence.
When you have just stepped out of Egypt into the British Museum, you feel you don’t want to talk—and Rachel scarcely spoke all the way home.