Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/137

Rh avalanche of débris from a mound behind him with a rumble of suppressed laughter, "I can hardly be expected to."

"What does it matter within a year or two. It was the fool's trick of Septimius Severus whenever it was, and I know that it was about the end of the second century that he brought a party here for an Egyptian tour. They came with the special object of hearing me sing, and because I didn't happen to be in the humour to perform just then, he must needs restore me from the waist upwards, by way, as he imagined, of propitiating the god. The consequence is that I have never sung a note since."

"The consequence, you call it," echoed the Southern Colossus. "Well, I have never been musical myself, so of course I don't know what sort of provocation it requires to make an offended singer keep silence for sixteen hundred years; but I confess I don't quite see where the connection comes in, or why you should have left off singing because