Adah’s irritation increased. “The young man Eli! Admire him I must, but like him I cannot, for would he not rob thy master and me of the sunbeam which hath gladdened our hearts—the little maid we have come to love as a daughter? Nay, but not for always. One year, Isaac, shalt thou remain in Syria, then shalt thou return to Israel with a gift in thine hand, bringing Miriam and her mother gently and by slow degrees if the woman be feeble. Here shall the household delight to do her honor. One year, Isaac, from the time our little maid went away shall she come back to us!”
With this decree of its mistress, the House of Naaman entered, with what patience it could, upon its period of waiting.
But Miriam did not return at the end of a year. The wild flowers faded in Israel; the figs ripened and were gone; the hills grew bare and yellow under the sun’s persistent glare; the grapes turned dusky and filled with liquid sweetness; the olive trees blossomed and bore and were denuded; the rains came and went; barley and wheat were sowed and matured and were harvested and wild flowers bloomed a second time in Israel. It was another spring, the time Isaac had said he would come, but though Miriam strained her eyes day after day gazing afar, no foreign horsemen, no chariot, no Syrian camels bestirred the dust of the Valley of Jiptha-el.
Rachel touched her lightly on the shoulder as she stood in the doorway. There was yearning tenderness in the older woman’s tones: “Still waitest thou, little maid? Peradventure they think thy mother hath need of thee, knowing not that she sleepeth long months in the sepulcher of thy people. Ample time hath there been since the rains ceased to take even the long journey from Damascus.”
Miriam turned a musing countenance. “But when Isaac talked last with Eli he said he would return when the rains were over to see how it fareth with me and to bring me tidings of my home.”
Rachel sighed and drew the girl close. “Is not thy mother’s dwelling ‘home’? And behold how Benjamin and little Caleb and I have loved thee. Are we not dearer than any in the House of Naaman?”
Miriam smiled and returned the caress. “The love light in thine eyes is beautiful and it filleth me with delight when it shineth upon me, but mostly doth it shine for thy husband and babe and for joy in thy home, not for thy sister.”
“It is the way with a woman,” was the answer, “as some day thou wilt know for thyself, for I have seen a look in eyes that followed thee, such a look as a man giveth to but one maid, though peradventure thou knowest—”
She paused, but as there was no reply and Miriam’s face was turned away, she hurried on: “And so thou wilt soon have a home of thine own if that is what thou desirest.”