Page:Zodiac stories by Blanche Mary Channing.pdf/81



upon a time there was a little girl named Tophra. She lived in Egypt, not far from the city Memphis,—a great and renowned city which King Menes had built long before on the dry bed of the river Nile, after turning it into a new channel.

King Menes must have been a very clever man, but he lived so extremely long ago that we will not trouble about him here. Tophra lived about two thousand years ago, and that is quite long enough.

In spite of the two thousand years, however, she was a real little girl.

She had an oval, olive-tinted face, with