"Die? Die? I cannot die. I am well and strong. I shall live and live and live. My mother and father will die and leave me, and Ezra and Jonas will weary of me. I shall be a beggar by the roadside. No hope! No hope!"
Naomi sank down again in a little heap and rocked to and fro. Her misfortune seemed too dreadful to be borne. It was incredible that such a fate should overtake her. It might happen to Rachel, or Rebekah, or to stout Solomon across the road, but not to Naomi, the daughter of Samuel the weaver.
As she swayed back and forth, torn by her misery, there came to her, like balm upon a wound, the familiar, comforting words that her mother and father had used over and over of late, to soothe the little girl's pain and to encourage hope in the sad hearts of them all.
"I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of Jehovah
In the land of the living.
Wait for Jehovah:
Be strong, and let thy heart take courage;
Yea, wait thou for Jehovah."
Naomi rose to her feet. The startled pigeons withdrew a short way and stood watching her curiously with their hard, bright eyes. About her was the soft sunlight, over her head the deep blue sky.
She turned her sightless face toward Jerusalem and spoke as if to a friend present.
"Yea, Lord," said the little Jewish girl in simple faith, "I will wait for Thee, and for Thy Messiah who will open the eyes of the blind. Surely when Messiah cometh I shall see. And until then, I will wait and pray for His coming. I will wait."
On the outer stairway that led from the ground to the roof stood Ezra, breathless, his hand pressed against his side. He had run all the way, without stopping, up the steep lanes from the Bethlehem stable, and now, pausing to rest an instant before speaking to Naomi, he could not help overhearing the last words she said.
"So thou wilt wait?" he whispered, his breath coming in gasps. "Thou wilt wait for His coming? Nay, my little sister, thy time of waiting is over. The Messiah is here! The Christ is born! O that I might shout it from the housetop, that my father and mother and all the world may know that the Lord hath kept His promise and the Messiah hath come!"
Ezra's whole heart and soul were full of a great new hope, and the sight of Naomi's tear-stained face and groping, outstretched hands made him long to tell her the good tidings at once.