he said; 'whatever they say, stay here.I will come back.'"The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and murdered.It was in vain.Naomi's answer was always the same:
"He told me to stay here, and surely I must do so."Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger.
"Tut!" they thought, "what should we want with the Jew child? Allah!
Was there ever such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too!
And as for her father, he'll never come back--never.Trust the Basha for that!"But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness, they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple offices--milking and churning, and baking and delving--in pity of the sweet girl with the great eyes who had been left to live alone.
And Naomi, seeing her helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy it, so that in a little while she was able to do for herself nearly everything that her neighbours at first did for her.
Then they would say among themselves, "Allah! she's not such a baby after all; and if she wasn't quite so beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn't so wicked--but then, God is great! God is great!"Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her father had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp alight by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under the dropping eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the radiance of the sun she had whispered to herself and said, "He will come back, Naomi; only wait, only wait;maybe it will be tonight, maybe it will be to-day; you will see, you will see."But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon her as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been there, her old content in her father's command that she should never leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.
"Who's to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing.
If the Kaid finds him in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom.That will come to the same thing in the end, or he'll die in prison."Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought she did not listen.And though it was little she understood of Kaids and ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father's peril, and at length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she should and must.With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind of a child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman, and her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and love were born in it.