he bright
Syrian sky until her eyes burned and ached, but still it was not
sundown. At last she curled herself up on the floor of the house with
heavy-eyed Three Legs at her side and fell asleep.

When she woke it was the First Watch of the Evening, six o'clock, and
the crimson sun was sinking out of sight behind the Judean hills. Naomi
sprang up and ran into the garden. There on the bench under the
orange-tree sat her father and mother and Aunt Miriam.

Aunt Miriam was talking.

"And so, since Simon is still sick with a heavy summer cold, nothing
will do but I must ride to Jerusalem to-morrow with the load of grapes,"
she was saying. Simon had large vineyards and owned many olive-trees,
beside being host at the inn. "To be sure, Jacob is a good serving-lad
and manages well without his master. But there is no one, after himself,
who makes a better bargain than I, Simon says, and so I must ride with
the fruit to see that justice is done my lord Simon in the trade."

Here Aunt Miriam laughed so heartily that Samuel and his wife were
forced to smile in sympathy. But Samuel was not altogether pleased with
Aunt Miriam's little joke about her husband, who was in truth her lord
and master and worthy of her deepest respect. He changed the subject by
asking:

"And what does the physician say of Simon?"

"He recommended that he kiss the nose of a mule," Aunt Miriam answered
gravely.

To her and to her audience there was nothing amusing about this
prescription. Stranger remedies than that had been ordered by the wise
doctors of the day: a broth of beetle's legs, crab's eyes, the heads of
mice, bruised flies to cure the sting of a hornet!

"But in spite of this," she continued, "he is still flat on his back,
groaning with aches and pains. So, to-morrow, Jacob and I start at
sunrise with the bullock cart, and no doubt there will be room among the
baskets of grapes for Naomi, if thou wilt permit her to go."

Naomi, at her father's elbow, glanced imploringly into his face, but she
did not speak a word. Her mother, from the end of the bench, smiled
hopefully at the little girl, but she, too, waited in deferent silence
until, to Naomi's great relief, her father gave a nod of consent.

"It is kind of thee, sister Miriam," said he, putting his arm about
Naomi and drawing her to his side, "to think of giving our little
daughter this pleasure."

"Naomi must be good and obedient and not make herself troublesome in any
way," sai