Once more she pressed her query, tenderly, anxiously, without receiving an answer. She knelt beside her mistress, despairing, insistent. “Knowest thou not that my lord is no better and that Jehovah thinketh upon thy sorrow? Oh that he would go to the prophet that is in Samaria!”
Caressingly Adah took Miriam’s face between her hands and looked at her through tear-blurred eyes. “All that I possess would I give, little maid, for the confidence of youth, but even as the ruthless rains wash away the footpaths, so doth Experience, in the autumn and winter of life, steal away courage and joy. Yea, well I know that thy master’s malady groweth worse, but what availeth a long and painful journey with disappointment at its end?”
Finding that neither argument nor persuasion availed, Miriam abandoned the subject and waited until she should be able to see Isaac. The next day she was fortunate in having speech with him just before he was summoned to his master’s apartments. Briefly she outlined the last conversation with her mistress and its hopelessness.
“But because thou dwellest in his favor, Isaac, speak thou unto him yet again that he perish not. Believest thou that Jehovah can do this? Believest thou, Isaac?”
“Yea,” looking into the serious depths of her dark eyes, “yea, Miriam, I believe.”
The time was auspicious. The burden of discomfort which Naaman had borne so long had become irritating, loathsome, intolerable. If, by enduring a little more, he could end it forever—yea, he would take the journey to Israel. It was a forlorn hope, but he would risk it.
Breathless with haste, Isaac paused a brief instant before Miriam. He chose to be very mysterious. “What wouldst thou, little maid, if thou couldst have thy choice?”
Expectantly she searched his radiant countenance and caught the gayety of his mood. “Not fruit nor flowers; not silken garments, nor fine linen, nor choice food, for thus sumptuously do I fare every day. Not even a new timbrel, for that thou didst give me when I was but a little maid is beautiful with ivory and mother-of-pearl. Naught have I to wish for save that my master should seek Jehovah through the Man of God who dwelleth at Samaria.”
“Then thou hast thy desire. He goeth!”
“When?” she asked, excitedly.