moment's purchase."

"Mere slip. Serpent of _old_ Nile. Doesn't matter in the least," says
Mr. Browne airily, "because she couldn't hear me as it happens. My dear
girl, follow out the argument. Cleopatra, metaphorically speaking, was a
fleshpot, because the world hankered after her. And--you're another."

"Really, Dicky, I must protest against your talking slang to me."

"Where does the slang come in? You're another fleshpot. I meant to
say--or convey--because _we_ all hanker after you."

"Do you?" with rising wrath. "May I ask what hankering means?"

"You had better not," says Mr. Browne mysteriously. "It was one of the
rites of Ancient Kem!"

"Now there is _one_ thing, Dicky," says Miss Kavanagh, her wrath boiling
over. "I won't be called names. I won't be called a _fleshpot_. You'll
draw the line there if you please."

"My dear girl, why not? Those delectable pots must have been
_bric-a-brac_ of the most _recherche_ description. Of a most delicate
shape, no doubt. Of a pattern, tint, formation, general get up--not to
be hoped for in these prosaic days."

"Nonsense," indignantly. She is fairly roused now, and Mr. Browne
regarding her with a proud eye, tells himself he is about to have his
reward at last. "You know very well that the term 'fleshpots' referred
to what was _in_ the pots, not to the pots themselves."

"That's all you know about it. That's where your fatal ignorance comes
in, my poor Joyce," says he, with immense compassion. "Search your Bible
from cover to cover, and I defy you to find a single mention of the
contents of those valuable bits of _bric-a-brac_. Of flesh_pots_--heavy
emphasis on the _pots_--and ten fingers down at once if you please--we
read continually as being hankered after by the Israelites, who then, as
now, were evidently avid collectors."

"You've been having champagne, Dicky," says Miss Kavanagh, regarding him
with a judicial eye.

"So have you. But I can't see what that excellent beverage has got to do
with the ancient Jews. Keep to the point. Did you ever hear that they
expressed a longing for the _flesh_ of Egypt? No. So far so good. The
pots themselves were the objects of their admiration. During that
remarkable run of theirs through the howling wilderness they, one and
all, to a _man_, betrayed the true aesthetic tendency. They raved
incessantly for the girl--I beg pardon--the _land_ they had left behind
them. The land that contained those priceless jars."

"I wonde