"In two years' time I shall be a Son of the Law, and then I shall sit on the men's side in the synagogue, and walk on the front streets on Sabbath. Thou and Mother will have to come alone." Naomi shook her head. "Jonas will walk with us then," she whispered back. "Boaster!" She did not really blame Ezra for his lordly words and air, for she knew how every Jewish boy looked forward to what was called his Day of Freedom, when by a priest in the synagogue he was made a Son of the Law. Then he would be no longer a child, but a young man. His school days would be over. He would choose a trade and begin to earn his own living. But it was a comfort to Naomi to think that, with Ezra gone, little Jonas would trot along by her side, and she was thinking of baby Jonas, left every Sabbath morning in the care of lame Enoch's old grandmother, now grown too feeble to climb the hill to the synagogue, when Aunt Miriam overtook them. Aunt Miriam's husband, Simon, was a wealthy man in the village of Bethlehem. He was the owner of the guest-house or khan that stood a little below the town on the way leading down into Egypt, and which was believed to have been the dwelling of Boaz and Ruth, and the birth-place of King David himself. To-day Aunt Miriam wore a robe of fine linen, covered with a wide cloak of black and white stripes, and her earrings and bracelets tinkled at every step. On week-days the children knew her to be bustling and chatty and fond of a jest. But the Sabbath saw her a different woman. Stately and dignified she walked beside them now, her brown eyes gazing far away and full of holy thought. The children felt awed and shy with her as they might with a stranger. Ezra stopped his whispering. Naomi glanced timidly up, her head held sideways like a little bird. "How good Aunt Miriam is!" she mused. But her aunt's thoughts wandered for a moment from their pious meditations. Suddenly she loosened the veil that was pulled across her face and spoke briefly to Naomi's mother. "I shall come to see thee to-night after sundown. I go to Jerusalem to-morrow, and there may be room in the cart for a certain good little maid." Naomi's heart leaped. Did Aunt Miriam mean her? What other little girl might she take with her? But she had said "a good little maid," and Naomi remembered with a pang of regret how she and Ezra had quarreled yesterday, and had not ceased their bickering until at sunset the three blasts of the silver trumpet, blown by the priest on the synagogue roof, had reminded them that Sabbath eve had come. She longed to ask outright: "Dost thou mean to take me to Jerusalem with thee, Aunt Miriam?" But they had reached the flat-roofed little synagogue, and once inside the gate the children silently followed their mother and aunt into the women's court and seated themselves on the mats that covered the stone floor.