Page:Zodiac stories by Blanche Mary Channing.pdf/89

72 "Your father has been very busy. What news do you think I have to tell you?"

"I do not know."

"Wonderful news. Will you guess it?"

"Is it about the black calf? " She sat up and twined her slender arms around him.

"It is about the black calf."

"He is to be mine to play with!" she laughed joyously.

Techo smiled gravely down upon her.

"Not that, little daughter. He is not as other calves—this creature. Tophra, do you remember the day when we all fasted and mourned because the Apis, the sacred bull Apis, was dead?"

Tophra nodded.

"All Memphis mourned," continued her father; "I saw the burial of the Apis. His immense coffin was drawn to its resting-place upon a sledge, and all the priests of Osiris followed him in garments of leopard-skin—garments of state. Do you know why they mourned so for him, little daughter?"