Jesus let the lecture pass in silence, and worked far into the night to make the mischief good.
Joseph confided his grief to his wife. Not that the boy would turn out a bad carpenter. If he liked he could succeed in anything. But Joseph was grieved to have to scold his favourite so often. He had to do that to every apprentice.
Mary said: "Joseph, you are quite right, to direct him. I am indeed anxious. I observe the child carefully, and I am not satisfied. He is so different, so very different from boys of his age."
"I think, too, that he is different," said Joseph. "We must not forget that from the very beginning it was different with this child. Jehovah understands it; I can't fit it together. He reads too much, and that's bad for young people."
"And I almost fear he reads the Law in order to criticise it," said Mary.
"He'll find himself. At his age boys exaggerate in everything." So Joseph consoled himself. "He's a singular boy. Look at him when he plays with other children! The tallest of them all! No, after all, I wouldn't have him other than he is."
They had talked in sorrow and joy while Jesus was nailing the wood correctly out in the workshop. And when he had gone to bed, Joseph crept into his room, and laid his hand gently on his head.
And so the years went by. Jesus improved in his work, and grew in intelligence, and in cheerfulness. The Sabbath day was all his own. He liked to go up to the hill top where the sheep were feeding among the stones and the olive-trees, whence he could see the mighty mountains of Lebanon and, the wide landscape, partly green and fertile and partly barren, down to the lake. He stood there and thought. He was always friendly with the people he met or who were employed about him, but he seldom became intimate with them. Occasionally he would join in some athletic exercise with youths from Cana, and in wrestling, strive who could overcome the other. Then his soft brown hair would fly in the wind, his cheeks would glow, and when the game was over, he would return arm-in-arm with his adversary to the valley below. But he preferred to be alone with himself, or with silent nature. Beautiful ideas came springing like lambs in that peaceful place, but there also came thoughts strong as lions. He dreamed. He did not think; thought, as it were, lay within himself, and then he spoke out many a word at which he was himself terrified. Ideas began to shape themselves within him, and before he was aware of it they were clearly spoken by his tongue, as if it was another who spoke for him. And so he came out of the mysterious depths to the light.
He was often challenged to dispute; he never defended himself except by words, but they were so weighty and fiery that people soon left him in peace. If he struck, he knew how to make the injury good. One day when he was going down the defile to the stony moor, a mischievous boy ran up behind him and knocked him down. Jesus quickly picked himself up, and shouted angrily to the boy, "Die!" When he saw the blazing eye, the boy turned deathly pale and began to tremble so that, near to fainting, he had to lean up against the rocky wall. Jesus went up to him, laid his hand on his shoulder and said kindly, "Live!"
No one in the whole country-side had ever seen such an eye as his. Like lightning in anger, in calmer moods like the gleam of dewdrops upon flowers.