"I won't if I can help it. But when you see their clothes and their hair and realise——"
"It happened over eighteen hundred years ago, my dear, and most of them got away."
"That didn't make it any better for those who are now before us," and momma used her handkerchief threateningly, though it was only in connection with her nose.
"Well now, Augusta, I hate to destroy an illusion like that, because they're not to be bought with money, but since you're determined to work yourself up over these unfortunates, I've got to expose them to you. They're not the genuine remains you take them for. They're mere worthless imitations."
"Alexander," said momma suspiciously, "you never hesitate to tamper with the truth if you think it will make me any more comfortable. I don't believe you."
"All right," returned the Senator; "when we get home you ask Bramley. It was Bramley that put me on to it. Whenever one of those Pompeii fellows dropped, the ashes kind of caked over him, and in the course of time there was a hole where he had been. See? And what you're looking at is just a collection of those holes filled up with composition and then dug out. Mere holes!"
"The illusion is dreadfully perfect," sighed momma. "Fancy dying like a baked potato in hot ashes! Somehow, Alexander, I don't seem able to get over it," and momma gazed with distressed fascination at the grim form of the negro porter.
"We've got no proper grounds for coming to that conclusion either," replied poppa firmly. "Just as likely they were suffocated by the gas that came up out of the ground."
"Oh, if I could think that!" momma exclaimed with relief. "But if I find you've been deceiving me, Alexander, I'll never forgive you. It's too solemn!"
"You ask Bramley," I heard the Senator reply. "And now come and tell me if this loaf of bread somebody baked eighteen hundred and twenty something years ago isn't exactly the same shape as the Naples bakers are selling right now."