The mummy and Miss Nitocris : a phantasy of the fourth dimensionGriffith, George Chetwynd
Science
The mummy and Miss Nitocris : a phantasy of the fourth dimension
Griffith, George Chetwynd
Fantasy fiction; Mummies -- Fiction; Supernatural -- Fiction
"Look!" she continued. "I am almost the same height. Just a little
taller, perhaps, but you see her hair is nearly as fair as mine. Of
course, you don't know what colour her eyes are--just fancy, Dad! they
have been shut for nearly five thousand years, perhaps a little
more--because I think they counted by dynasties then--and yet look at
the features! Just imagine me dead!"
"Just imagine yourself shutting the door on the other side, my dear
Niti," said the Professor, who had risen from the chair, and was facing
his daughter and the Mummy. "I don't want to banish you too
unceremoniously, but I really have a lot of work to do to-night, and, as
you might know, Bachelor of Science of London as you are, I have got to
worry out as best I can, if I can do it at all, this problem that
Hartley sent me about the Forty-seventh Proposition of the first book of
Euclid."
"Oh yes," she said, going to his side and putting her hand on to his
shoulder as he stood facing the Mummy; "I have reason enough to remember
that. And what does Professor Hartley say about it?"
"He says, my dear Niti," said the Professor, in a voice which had
something like a note of awe in it, "that when Pythagoras thought out
that problem--which, of course, is not Euclid's at all--he almost saw
across the horizon of the world that we live in."
"But that," she interrupted, "would be something like looking across the
edge of time into eternity, and that--well, of course, that is quite
impossible, even to you, Dad, or Mr Hartley. What does he mean?"
"He doesn't quite mean that, dear," replied the Professor, still staring
straight at the motionless Mummy as though he half expected the lips
which had not spoken for fifty centuries to answer the question that was
shaping itself in his mind. "What Hartley means, dear, is this--that
when Pythagoras thought out that proposition he had almost reached the
border which divides the world of three dimensions from the world of
four."
"Which, as our dear old friend Euclid would say, is impossible; because
you know, Dad, if that were possible, everything else would be. Come,
now, Annie is bringing up your whisky and soda. Put away your problems
and take your night-cap, and do get to bed in something like respectable
time. Don't worry your dear old head about forty-seventh propositions
and fourth dimensions and mummies and that sort of thing, even if this
Mummy does happen to look a bit like me. Now, good night, and remember
that the night-cap _is_ to be a night-cap, and when you've put it on you
really must go to bed. You've been thinking a great deal too much this
week. Good-night, Dad."
"Good-night, Niti, dear. Don't trouble your head about my thinking.
Sufficient unto the brain are the thoughts thereof. Sometimes they are
more than sufficient. Good-night. Sleep well and don't dream, if you can
help it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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