Page:"The Mummy" Volume 3.djvu/228

 "Does it," said the priest, shaking himself like a water-spaniel; "then I should be very glad to have a little of it at present, for I am shivering with cold; to say nothing of being so hungry that I could eat my fingers."

"I am surprised to hear you talk of being hungry, father," said Abelard; "you are surely too fat to feel any craving for food. Fat, you know, is a kind of intermedium through which the nutritive matter extracted from the food, must pass before it is assimilated to repair the loss of the individual. It thus forms a kind of magazine to supply his wants; and a fat man may abstain from food much longer than another, because, during this abstinence, the collected fat is rapidly re-absorbed."

Father Murphy did not speak, but his look was sufficient, and his teeth clattering in his head afforded an ample commentary upon the text.

"You seem cold also," said the pedantic butler; "but that must be a mistake, for animal oil is universally allowed to be a bad conductor of caloric."

"The devil take your caloric," cried Father