She thought again, gratefully,
"I have come home..." Nothing was changed here; all was as it had been.
Here life was safe, constant, unchanging.
Teti was now the child and she one of the many mothers enclosed by the home walls - but the framework, the essence of things, was unchanged.
A ball with which one of the children was playing rolled to her feet and she picked it up and threw it back, laughing.
Renisenb went on to the porch with its gaily colored columns, and then through into the house, passing through the big central chamber, with its colored frieze of lotus and poppies, and so on to the back of the house and the women's quarters.
Upraised voices struck on her ear and she paused again, savoring with pleasure the old familiar echoes.
Satipy and Kait - arguing as always!
Those well-remembered tones of Satipy's voice, high, domineering and bullying!
Satipy was her brother Yahmose's wife, a tall, energetic, loud-tongued woman, handsome in a hard, commanding kind of way.
She was eternally laying down the law, hectoring the servants, finding fault with everything, getting impossible things done by sheer force of vituperation and personality.
Everyone dreaded her tongue and ran to obey her orders.
Yahmose himself had the greatest admiration for his resolute, spirited wife, though he allowed himself to be bullied by her in a way that had often infuriated Renisenb.
At intervals, in the pauses in Satipy's high-pitched sentences, the quiet, obstinate voice of Kait was heard.
Kait was a broad, plain-faced woman, the wife of the handsome, gay Sobek.
She was devoted to her children and seldom thought or spoke about anything else.
She sustained her side of the daily arguments with her sister-in-law by the simple expedient of repeating whatever statement she had originally made with quiet, immovable obstinacy.
She displayed neither heat nor passion, and never considered for a moment any side of a question but her own.
Sobek was extremely attached to his wife and talked freely to her of all his affairs, secure in the knowledge that she would appear to listen, make comforting sounds of assent or dissent, and would remember nothing inconvenient, since her mind was sure to have been dwelling un some problem connected with the children all the time.
"It's an outrage, that's what I say," shouted Satipy.
"If Yahmose had the spirit of a mouse he would not stand it for a moment!
Who is in charge here when Imhotep is absent?
Yahmose!
And as Yahmose's wife it is I who should have the first choice of the woven mats and cushions.
That hippopotamus of a black slave should be -"
Kait's heavy, deep voice cut in: "No, no, my little one, do not eat your doll's hair.
See, here is something better - a sweet - oh, how good..."
"As for you, Kait, you have no courtesy; you don't even listen to what I say - you do not reply - your manners are atrocious."
"The blue cushion has always been mine... Oh, look at little Ankh - she is trying to walk..."
"You are as stupid as your children, Kait, and that is saying a good deal!
But you shall not get out of it like this.
I will have my rights, I tell you."
Renisenb started as a quiet footfall sounded behind her.
She turned with a start and with the old, familiar feeling of dislike at seeing the woman Henet standing behind her.
Henet's thin face was twisted into its usual half-cringing smile.
"Things haven't changed much, you'll be thinking, Renisenb," she said.
"How we all bear Satipy's tongue, I don't know!
Of course, Kait can answer back.
Some of us aren't so fortunate!
I know my place, I hope - and my gratitude to your father for giving me a home and food and clothing.
Ah, he's a good man, your father.
And I've always tried to do what I can.
I'm always working - giving a hand here and a hand there - and I don't expect thanks or gratitude.
If your dear mother had lived it would have been different.
She appreciated me.
Like sisters we were!
A beautiful woman she was.
Well, I've done my duty and kept my promise to her.
'Look after the children, Henet,' she said when she was dying.
And I've been faithful to my word.