"I am glad of that," Kenkenes replied gravely. "Let me make clean
copies of these which are complete."

He gathered up the sheets and took his place at the opposite table.
Then ensued a long silence, broken only by the loud and restless
investigations of the omnipresent and unabashed ape.

At last the elder sculptor spoke.

"The eye of heaven must be unblinkingly upon the divine Meneptah," he
observed, as though he had but thought aloud.

Kenkenes gazed at his father with the inquiry on his face that he did
not voice. The sculptor had risen from his bench and was searching a
chest of rolled plans near him. He caught his son's look and closed
his mouth on an all but spoken expression. Kenkenes continued to gaze
at him in some astonishment, and the elder man muttered to himself:

"I like him not, though if Osiris should ask me why, I could not tell.
But he hath a too-ready smile, and by that I know he will twirl
Meneptah like a string about his finger."

The eyes of the young man widened. "The new adviser?" he asked.

"Even so," was the emphatic reply.

Before Kenkenes could ask for further enlightenment a female slave
bowed in the doorway.

"The Lady Senci sends thee greeting and would speak with thee. She is