Uduma, who had put by her carding sat with her eyes upon a bright place in the sky. She sat very still, her body unbowed, her hands folded in her lap. “Uduma, Uduma! if the lamb learns to say, ‘I am son or daughter of the ram’—and thinks nothing of the ewe—”
Uduma still looked at the bright sky. Time went by. The place was golden, warm and dry, and possessed an aromatic breath. The breath seemed to come slow-drawn, and Uduma’s breath the same. At last she spoke. “I see what I had not seen.... For a long, long time, for a long, long time, the lamb thought all of the ewe and nothing of the ram.... The wind goes to and the wind goes fro. The summer is, and then the winter is. The day is, and then the night is. The winter is, and then the summer is. The night is, and then the day is.”
“The two,” said Vana, “are evened in night-and-day and summer-and-winter.”
“There is more wisdom in you,” said Uduma, “than shows every day! Why do you give milk to pride and greed?”
“I do not so. I give milk to my children.”
“Pride-for-children and greed-for-children are long names for short things.”
Vana with her long, embrowned fingers moved her silver anklets. “O Uduma, will not Mardurbo remember that, for the children, I let the council be called, and said in my turn, ‘Change the old ways’?”
“Mardurbo—Mardurbo! Look in your own heart for Mardurbo and his thoughts!”
“Will we make evil, O Uduma, changing the old? If there were evil to tribe-women, would Istal, the Mother of the gods, let me make it?”
“Look in your heart for tribe-women, and look in your heart for Istal!... You will do what you will do, and there will come out of it what there will come out of it. As for me, I am a watcher, but my eyes are not very good. I do not know what the gods wish— And now I am tired, and I will speak no more, woman-who-came-yesterday!”