Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/274

 if you prefer the Asiatic version, of Sabazius and Astarte. They are quite right, though how they know such a thing is beyond me. You will find. . . ."

He would have, like the Italians, gone on for some time explaining the legend of Priapus, but Mrs. Weatherby interrupted. The nostrils had begun again to distend and quiver. She seemed about to snort fire.

"It is my garden," she said quite firmly. "I shall do with it as I like."

"Why not," suggested Mr. Winnery tactfully, "give the thing to a museum?"

"No, I understand about these things. Haven't I devoted my life to studies of the more psychic religions? It is an evil omen and ought to be buried again. I am certain of it. Ever since it was found I have been having misfortunes."

Winnery shrugged his shoulders. He failed to see quite how the seeress could with intellectual honesty support her own superstition and reject the much more ancient one supported by Pietro and his party. That, he supposed, was the common attitude of superstitious and religious people. But he simply turned to the workmen. He told them that the signora wanted the thing buried and that if they chose not to obey her, she would find other workmen. Deciding that they could risk a blight in the future more easily than the loss of a job in the present, they turned back sullenly, but not silently, and began to dig. Pietro made as if to launch a final protest and then fell silent. The goats had by now gathered in a circle about the scene of the conflict,