“A children’s disease is epidemic here; the angel of death lurks now in every street; and you have let our sons trail after a procession?”
She lay her head against his bosom as if to win his pardon, and said, “If God so wills it, Death plucks his victims even in the greatest seclusion.”
The hours of the day passed and he asked again, “Why have our little sons not yet returned?”
And again she answered calmly, with reassurance, “The procession cannot be over yet; or else, they have stopped somewhere to play.”
And she asked him to forgive them for having so childishly forgotten their home, and persuaded him to harbour no uneasiness. Could he not see that she was calm?
But when evening had fallen and time for the closing prayer of Sabbath had come, he became once more uneasy, and exclaimed, “I do not understand you. How can you be so calm? It is already so dark, and still our sons are not here.”
And again she answered serenely and soothingly:
“I am at ease because I know that God is with them on all their ways.”
Now he was ashamed to feel uneasiness, and recited the closing prayers. When he had finished, she turned to him quietly:
“I have a question to propound to you, my husband. Some one has entrusted to my keeping two jewels, with permission to use them and take joy in them. And I have really used them and taken in them much joy. They were my adornment and my playthings, my infinite happiness for many a year. Now the owner has come and asks their return. Shall I give them back or keep them for my own?”