Little lame Enoch proved a faithful friend, and Naomi felt comfortable with him as a playmate, for he, too, suffered from a handicap and yet was cheerful and gay notwithstanding. He knew a host of stories told him by his old grandmother, and the long hours slipped away quickly while their little tongues chattered, though their hands and feet were pathetically still.
But of all the comfort Naomi knew, apart from the love of her father and mother, the companionship of Ezra was the greatest. He amused her, he waited upon her, he revived her drooping spirits with his own high hopes and plans for her.
"Thou shalt see again, Naomi," he would declare confidently. "All the cures have not been tried yet. Thou art not like the beggars by the roadside. Say not that again, or I will dip thee some day in the well behind the myrtle bush that thou wilt be digging ere long. Most of the wayside beggars are old men with not an eyeball left, whilst thou, Naomi, art young, and thine eyes from without look as clear and strong as mine. Wait until my father has taken thee to the Pool of Bethesda! Have patience, Naomi! Thou shalt see again!"
The Bethesda Pool lay in Jerusalem on the Temple mount, a stone's throw from the Sheep Gate of the Court of the Gentiles, where Naomi had lingered before the sheep-pens on the afternoon that now seemed so far away.
Perhaps in these days we should say that the great pool contained a mineral spring, but in Naomi's time it was not doubted that an angel had wrought the cures that were told far and wide of this "well of healing." About it were always clustered the sick, the lame, the halt, and the blind, in the belief that when the angel troubled the waters the first to dip himself therein would be healed.
So Samuel the weaver purposed to take Naomi thither, and, even while the little girl lay thinking long, long thoughts and wishing for daybreak, the moments slipped by, the Fourth Watch or Morning came, and Naomi's mother rose to prepare the meal so the travelers might have an early start.
A stout little donkey, borrowed from the khan stable, carried Naomi and her father briskly over the familiar Jerusalem highway. The little girl remembered how happy she had been on her journey with Aunt Miriam and how all the world had seemed gay that morning. Then she recalled the "tap, tap, tap" of the blind men on the road, and she hid her face in her father's cloak and trembled.
"O that the Angel of the Pool may open my eyes!" prayed Naomi. "O that the Angel of the Pool may open my eyes!"
The Pool of Bethesda was a pretty spot. About it had been built five porches, and in their shelter lay the sick and the withered, the lame and the blind, waiting for a chance to push their way in the moment the waters began to move.