In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only of the babe.
The child was born blind and dumb and deaf.At the feast of life there was no place left for it.So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall, and called on God to take it.
"Take it!" she cried--"take it! Make haste, O God, make haste and take it!"But the child did not die.It lived and grew strong.Ruth herself suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it.
So, little by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side and whisper "Take heart of hope, O Ruth!
God does not afflict willingly.Perhaps the child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is not dumb.Who shall ye say?
Wait and see!"
And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no difference in her child from the children of other women.
Sometimes she would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark.
And sometimes she would look at the pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and full as a shell on the shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the sea was not heard in it, and that all within was silence.
So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said, "It is well, all is well with the child.She will look upon my face and see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue will yet speak to me, and make me very glad." And then an ineffable serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.