"Come in, thou blessed of the Lord," was the gracious greeting Anna gave them, and she ushered them up the stairs and into a room that actually had two windows cut in the side. They were the first windows Naomi had ever looked from, and she held tight to the sill for fear of falling into the street below.
"I would that I had windows in my house," thought Naomi ruefully. "I would be so proud if I were Martha. But then she has no brother Ezra nor baby Jonas to play with her."
In spite of the windows little Martha did not seem at all proud. She helped her mother bring bowls of water for the guests to wash in, and when the meal was ready she patted the plump cushions into shape on the divans placed before the gayly painted table.
"Sit by me," she whispered to Naomi, breaking off a neat three-cornered piece of barley cake which was to serve Naomi as knife and fork and spoon.
For dinner there was a dish of young kid stewed with olives, hot barley cakes, fresh and dried fruit—apricots, figs, pomegranates—and a bowl of amber honey.
Not an easy thing is it to serve one's self with neatness and dispatch without knife or fork, and only one's fingers and a bit of bread to rely upon. But Naomi and Martha were able to dip their food from the common dish with a bit of barley cake quite as nicely as the grown people did, and they sat quiet and respectful while Aunt Miriam told of Simon's illness and the reason for this trip to Jerusalem.
When the meal was over, Martha ran for fresh bowls of water, for the Jews were careful to wash both before and after eating, and as Naomi dabbled her fingers daintily Martha whispered to her:
"Mother says we are all to go about the twelfth hour, in the cool of the day, to show thee the Temple and to see King Herod's garden. Oh! Oh!"
And she squeezed her new friend's arm with such fervor that the pretty bowl was barely saved from falling to the floor.