CHAPTER V
All the World Comes Visiting
IT was the winter season in Palestine.
In the darkness and despair that followed her trip to the Pool of Bethesda, Naomi had not cared what the weather might be. She had listened with indifference to the whistling, roaring wind-storm that had come suddenly one night in October telling the weather-wise that summer was over and the rainy season at hand.
Huddled over the brazier of charcoal that smouldered under a rug in a shallow hole in the middle of the floor, Naomi had not heeded the wild dash of rain against the house nor its melancholy dripping in the deserted garden. Even the excitement of Ezra and Jonas over a slight fall of snow, the first either one had ever seen, had failed to rouse her.
Samuel and his wife were troubled beyond words at this calamity that had come upon their child. Aunt Miriam and Simon were sympathetic, but could offer no advice. Ezra was at his wits' ends, for all his schemes and devices to amuse failed, and the hollow words of encouragement died upon his honest lips.
Samuel, too, had a fresh worry of which Naomi knew nothing, and which, slight though it was in comparison with the little girl's misfortune, did not tend to make the daily life of the family more pleasant.