“You wouldn’t think so if you seen the way they was eatin’,” replied Jennie, shifting her wad of chewing gum. “I mean they’re goin’ to them Egypt tombs, where they’s alligaster vases an’ omelets an’ things like that.”
“Oh, you mean the tombs of the Pharaohs,” said the motherly housekeeper, in great relief. “They’ve been dead a long time.”
“Mebbe,” admitted Jennie. “Though I hadn’t even heard they was sick. But it just beats all the way them men go trampin’ all over the earth when they got a good home like this. Here they jest got back from Brazil, an’ lucky they was not to be et up by golcondas or cannonballs, an’ instead of settlin’ down, thankful like, they must be goin’ off lickety-switch to another of them heathen places. Who knows what’ll happen to ’em? Like as not Mister Don may fall down into one of them Egypt tombs an’ be squashed.”
“Oh, I guess not,” replied the housekeeper soothingly. “He’s been in a good many tight places and has come through all right.”
“Yes,” admitted Jennie. “But the picture that goes to the well too often is broke at last. An’ it jest makes my blood creep to think of them goin’ to that Egypt place, where all them plagues used to be.”
“That was a long time ago,” remarked the housekeeper. “I guess it’s all right now.”
“I don’t know,” said Jennie, renewing her attack on her chewing gum more vigorously and shaking her head. “From all I’ve heard, them Egyptians ain’t any better than they ort to be.”
“Who is?” asked Mrs. Roscoe mildly.
“A feller took me to a movie once that showed all ’bout Egypt,” went on Jennie, ignoring the question. “The big buildings was so dark an’ gloomy they give me the shivers. I ast the feller why they didn’t have electric lights, an’ he tole me that they didn’t need electric lights coz they had so many Israelites. I ast him what they had to do with it, an’ he only laughed an’ said he loved every bone in my head.”
“He had a lot to love, then,” put in Mrs. Roscoe dryly.