And Naomi clung fast to her father and mother as if they must save her from this dreadful fate.
"Blind!" thought her mother, remembering with a shudder the numberless figures that stretched pitiful hands by the Bethlehem roadside. "My little Naomi, blind?"
"An amulet will cure her," said worried Samuel stoutly. "Be not downhearted, my little maid. Thy father will buy for thee an amulet that will open those brown eyes of thine wider than ever before."
So Naomi wore about her neck for weeks a small three-cornered bag, in which was sewn a scrap of parchment taken from a religious book, written after certain rules and with a diagram so mysterious that not even Samuel could understand it.
And how were the contents of this little three-cornered bag to restore Naomi's eyesight? Why, by charming away the wicked spirit who had cast an evil eye upon her. Or perhaps Naomi had chanced to rub her eyes upon waking before she had washed her hands. Being unclean, the devil present had slipped from her fingers into her eyes, and now must be charmed out again by the holy words about her neck.
Not a thought that Naomi, daily handling sick little Three Legs, might have caught the malady that first darkened the vision of the poor little animal, and then caused the frail life to flicker out altogether.
Naomi missed her pet sorely, but its death was only one more grief added to the burden that overshadowed all her days.
She could no longer play in the garden. Her well, begun so happily, was neglected, though not forgotten, and little Jonas was the leader now, guiding her faltering steps with such good-will that Naomi forgave him when he led her straight into the orange-tree or neglected to warn her that the myrtle bush was in her path.
Her friends Rachel and Rebekah had deserted her, for at the first mention of the evil eye they had looked askance, and now they never came to play nor to entertain her with their talk.