"These are my scarabs," he said.
Lord Emsworth adjusted his glasses, and the mild smile disappeared from his face, to be succeeded by a set look. A stage director of a moving-picture firm would have recognized the look. Lord Emsworth was registering interest—interest which he perceived from the first instant would have to be completely simulated; for instinct told him, as Mr. Peters began to talk, that he was about to be bored as he had seldom been bored in his life.
Mr. Peters, in his character of showman, threw himself into his work with even more than his customary energy. His flow of speech never faltered. He spoke of the New Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, Osiris and Ammon; waxed eloquent concerning Mut, Bubastis, Cheops, the Hyksos kings, cylinders, bezels and Amenophis III; and became at times almost lyrical when touching on Queen Taia, the Princess Gilukhipa of Mitanni, the lake of Zarukhe, Naucratis and the Book of the Dead. Time slid by.
"Take a look at this, Lord Emsworth."
As one who, brooding on love or running over business projects in his mind, walks briskly into a lamppost and comes back to the realities of life with a sense of jarring shock, Lord Emsworth started, blinked and returned to consciousness. Far away his mind had been—seventy miles away—in the pleasant hothouses and shady garden walks of Blandings Castle. He came back to London to find that his host, with a mingled air of pride and reverence, was extending toward him a small, dingy-looking something.
He took it and looked at it. That, apparently, was what he was meant to do. So far, all was well.
"Ah!" he said—that blessed word; covering everything! He repeated it, pleased at his ready resource.
"A Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty," said Mr. Peters fervently.
"I beg your pardon?"
"A Cheops—of the Fourth Dynasty."