“Lives she here?”
“Ay, yonder, near my mother’s sister, the wife of Halphaï.”
She pointed towards a battlemented roof, but my eyes were more concerned with her own house, at which we were just arriving. It was a one-storey house, square and ugly like the others, redeemed by its little garden with its hedge of prickly pear, though even this garden was littered with new-made wheels and stools and an olive-wood table.
“Halphaï is gone up for the Passover,” she added. She stopped abruptly. The tinkle of mule-bells was borne to us from a steep track that came to join our slower pathway.
“Lo, my mother!” she cried joyfully; and placing her urn upon the ground, she hastened down the narrow track. I moved delicately, yet not without curiosity, to the flank of the hedge, and presently a little caravan appeared, ambling gently, with the girl walking and chattering happily by the side of her mother, who rode upon an ass. I noticed that the woman, who was small and spare, listened but little to her daughter’s eager talk, and seemed deaf to the home-coming laughter of her four curly-headed sons, who rode their mules sideways, with their legs dangling down like the fringes of their garments. Her shoulders were sunk in bitter brooding, and when a sudden stumbling of her ass made her raise her head mechanically to pull him up, I saw the shimmer of tears in her large olive-tinted eyes. Certainly I should not have called her made in the image of her daughter, I thought at that moment, for the face was sorely lined, and under the cheap black head-shawl I saw the greying hair that was still raven on her arched eyebrows. But doubtless the burden of much child-bearing had worn her out, after the sad fashion of Eastern women.
These reflections were, however, dissipated as soon as born, for a little cry of dismay from the girl brought to my perception that it was the forgotten water-jar that had caused the ass’s stumble, and that the urn now lay overturned, if not shattered, amid a fast-vanishing pool.
The little mishap made her brothers smile. “Courage!” cried the eldest. “Yeshua will fill it with wine instead.” At this all the four rustics broke into a roar of merriment. The youngest, a mere beardless youth, added in his vulgar Aramaic, “What one ass hath destroyed another will make good.”
The little woman turned on him passionately. “Hold thy peace, Yehudah. Who knows but that he did change the water into wine?”
“Let him come and do it here,” retorted the eldest. “Thou hast not forgotten what befell when he essayed his marvels in Nazara. No mighty works could he do here, albeit Shimeon and Yosé, inclining their ears to Zebedee’s foolish wife, were ready to sit on his right and left hand in the Kingdom.”
The two young men who had not yet spoken looked somewhat foolish.