The early disappearance of the elder Joseph has been explained by his death, which seems probable. The widow was {121} left with five sons and some daughters.[10] The eldest son was, according to the story, more than twelve years old, and he had probably to share the household burden. The days were over when he played with the children in the market at weddings and at funerals, and while he never forgot the games and kept something of the child's mind throughout, he had to learn what it was to be weary and heavy-laden. His parables include pictures of home-life--one of a little house, where the master in bed can argue with an importunate friend outside the door, who has come on a very homely errand.[11] In a group of stories, parables of the mother, we see the woman sweeping the house till she finds a lost drachma, the recovery of which is joyful enough to be told to neighbours. We see her hiding leaven in three measures of meal, while the eldest son sat by and watched it work. He never forgot the sight of the heaving, panting mass, the bubbles swelling and bursting, and all the commotion the proof of something alive and at work below; and he made it into a parable of the Kingdom of God--associated in the minds of the weary with broken bubbles, and in the mind of Jesus with the profoundest and most living of realities. It was perhaps Mary, too, who explained to him why an old garment will not tolerate a new patch. Whatever is the historical value of the fourth Gospel, it lays stress on the close relation between Jesus and his mother. One of the Aramaic words, which the church cherished from the first as the _ipsissima verba_ of Jesus, was _Abba_. It was what Mary had taught him as a baby to call Joseph. The fact that in manhood he gave to God the name that in his childhood he had given to Joseph, surely throws some light upon the homelife. To this word we shall return.