"Is she beautiful?" asked the strange washerwoman.
"So the men say, but——"
"But? Go on."
"Why, you yourself, girl, would be fairer than the Princess if you had one of her jewels in your hair. And as for her figure, no one sees her except as she lies like a painted statue in the palanquin. She may have a turtle's back and duck's legs, for all she arches her neck like a swan."
The clamour of the washerwomen sufficed without further watchword with the sentry at the gate, who opened to them the "needle's eye" or small door. Once within the city they could not be induced to venture out again for the day, though assured that the imagined Judas was only a Greek courier riding from the direction of Jericho, who brought tidings that no enemy was to be seen for a distance of twenty stadia in any direction.
Passing the cellar-like tunnel beneath the city wall the laundresses scattered, each in her own way, through the streets.
The woman we have described, with her load upon her head like a huge turban, and with the lad clinging to her skirts, went up the Cheesemakers' Street to the Street of David. She paused an instant by the little altar which stood by the street door of the house of Glaucon, whether in detestation of this sacrilege of a home devoted to piety or to offer a pinch of incense, an observer could not have told. She rapped sharply at the gate. The bar was instantly dropped from within. A short, stout man, whose long temple locks were well whitened with years, stood in the half opening.
"What do you want?" said he, as he saw the unexpected visitors.
Before the woman could make response, the child had uttered a cry, "It's Ephraim! It's Ephraim!"