Terah did not answer. Abraham asked his mother, but she could only tell him that the gods who created everything were with them in the house.
"But Haran made those silly things of wood and clay," said Abraham, and at last they refused to answer his awkward questions.
Mostly he stood at the door of the house, gazing at the sky as if trying to read the secrets behind the sun and stars.
"Thou shouldst have been placed with an astrologer," said Haran to him one day. "Thou art a child of the stars."
Terah heard this and was angry with Haran, for he feared that the secret of the child's birth might be betrayed.
"I know not why my father keeps thee here," said Haran afterward to Abraham. "Thou art becoming lazy. I have worked enough this day and will go out to the woods to watch the hunting. Stay thou here. Perchance a purchaser may come. Be heedful and obtain good payment for the idols."
Not long after Haran left, an old man entered the shop and said he wished to buy an idol.
"I dropped my idol on the ground yesterday and it broke," he said. "I must have a stronger one."
"Certainly thou must have a god so strong that naught can break it," answered Abraham. "Tell me, how old art thou?"
"Full sixty years, boy," replied the man.