“And firmness to see that she walketh therein,” put in the wife.
“But she hath a willing mind, Sarah. Hast thou not noticed how, of late, she needeth no second bidding to go to the spring? She doth not even wait for Miriam to help; she watcheth to see when the jars need refilling and seeth to them most diligently.”
“Yea,” was the response, “and I have wondered what—” but Caleb, sighing, was already taking his way to the valley as Judith neared the spring.
A little smile played about her lips. “How strange it is,” she thought, “that Benjamin’s sheep need a drink of water and our jars must be refilled at exactly the same time every day!”
At that very moment Rachel, with a tiny reed basket of bread on her arm, started in the same direction.
“If I should see him while I feed the pigeons,” her face was rosy red, “and he might be somewhere near, although, of course, if I knew for certain I could not be so bold as to be there too—”
She entered a little gulch whose narrow walls constantly widened as one neared the spring. The air was sweet with aromatic shrubs. A bird hidden somewhere seemed about to burst its throat with melody. Insects buzzed a little song of content. As the girl appeared, a flock of wild pigeons rose from various resting places and circled around her with the familiarity of old friendship. Her thoughts, however, were elsewhere. Peeping through the bushes, she had seen Benjamin and Judith, laughing and talking together with all too evident enjoyment. For a moment—or was it several?—she seemed rooted to the spot with surprise, then, sick at heart, she had dropped down upon the coarse, green grass, grateful for the overhanging rocks and bushes which gave her safe concealment.
To think of Benjamin, who had never cared for any maid but herself! They had been childish sweethearts. Around her neck at this very instant was suspended from a grass-woven chain a bracelet of dried grasses which he had given her once when they played at a wedding. In a thousand ways since then and with a tenderness she could not doubt he had told her of his love. Had he not desired Caleb, his father, to ask her parents’ consent to their marriage? True it had been refused, Abner’s proposal having been received unexpectedly a day or so earlier, yet she and Benjamin had hoped against hope, and now—
But the pigeons were insistent. They pecked from her basket. They alighted upon her shoulders. They watched for the customary open handful of crumbs from which to eat. Mechanically, since they would not be denied, she fed them. Abner, passing along the brow of the hill, saw both tableaux. He stopped, looked, and passed on, pondering deeply.
“Rachel is the gentler, the sweeter,” he said to himself, “but this maid from Sharon is likewise pleasing. I wonder! Yea, I wonder!”