Amram followed him out of the temple, and went home.
Jochebed went about in Pharaoh’s garden watering cucumbers; she went to and fro with her watering pot between the Watergate that opened on the river and the cucumber-bed. But sometimes she went through the gate and remained for a while outside.
Miriam, her daughter, pruned the vines which grew against the garden-wall, but seemed to direct her attention more towards the broad walk which led up to the summer palace of the princesses. Her head moved like the leaf of the palm-tree when the wind blows through it, looking sometimes towards the Watergate, sometimes towards the great walk, while her hands carried on her work. As her mother delayed her return, she went from the wall down to the gate, and out to the low river shore where the bulrushes swayed in the gentle south wind. A stonechat of the desert sat on a rock by the river, wagged its tail, and flapped its wings, as though it wished to show something which it saw; and chattered at the sight of something strange among the bulrushes. High up in the air a hawk hovered in spiral circles, eyeing the ground below. Miriam broke off some lotus-buds and threw them at the stonechat, which flew away, but kept its beak still pointing towards the rushes. The girl girt up her dress, waded into the water, and now saw her mother standing, hidden up to her waist in a forest of papyrus-reeds, bending over a reed-basket with a baby at her breast.
“Mother,” whispered Miriam, “Pharaoh’s daughter is approaching; she comes to bathe in the river.”
“Lord God of Israel, have mercy on my child!”
“If you have given the child enough to drink, hasten and come.”
The mother bowed herself like an arch over the child; her hair hung down like an insect-net, and two tears fell from her eyes on the little one’s outstretched hands. Then she rose, placed a sweet date in its mouth, softly closed the cover, murmured a blessing, and came out of the water.
A gentle breeze from the land swayed the rushes and crisped the surface of the river.
“The basket swims,” she said, “but the river flows on; it is red with blood and thick as cream. Lord God of Israel, have mercy!”