No doubt it was for my sake that he behaved so generously!" The young wife laughed, and pulling the cat's face close to her own, held her nose to its cool little nose, stared into its green eyes, and said, imitating childish talk: "There now, pussy--how kind people are to your little mistress." Katuti was vexed daughter's childish impulses.
"It seems to me," she said, "that you might leave off playing and trifling when I am talking of such serious matters.

I have long since observed that the fate of the house to which your father and mother belong is a matter of perfect indifference to you; and yet you would have to seek shelter and protection under its roof if your husband--" "Well, mother ?" asked Nefert breathing more quickly.
As soon as Katuti perceived her daughter's agitation she regretted that she had not more gently led up to the news she had to break to her; for she loved her daughter, and knew that it would give her keen pain.
So she went on more sympathetically: "You boasted in joke that people are good to you, and it is true; you win hearts by your mere being--by only being what you are.

And Mena too loved you tenderly; but 'absence,' says the proverb, 'is the one real enemy,' and Mena--" "What has Mena done ?" Once more Nefert interrupted her mother, and her nostrils quivered.
"Mena," said Katuti, decidedly, "has violated the truth and esteem which he owes you--he has trodden them under foot, and--" "Mena ?" exclaimed the young wife with flashing eyes; she flung the cat on the floor, and sprang from her couch.
"Yes--Mena," said Katuti firmly.

"Your brother writes that he would have neither silver nor gold for his spoil, but took the fair daughter of the prince of the Danaids into his tent.

The ignoble wretch!" "Ignoble wretch!" cried Nefert, and two or three times she repeated her mother's last words.