"Lofts, Norah - How Far To Bethlehem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lofts Norah)

husband and a house of her own, and presently, by God's favour, a
child. She pictured him, a sturdy little boy, rather like Rachel's
Joshua. Yet for all this, the feeling of immanence, of waiting for
something wonderful, was with her still, and honesty compelled her to
admit that it had nothing to do with Joseph, her feeling for him, or
the little house adjoining the workshop.

At this point she returned to herself and her companions and reaching
out her arms took Joshua from Susannah, saying:

"My turn now." She settled him on her hip.

"By Abraham's beard," she said, 'you're heavier today than you were
yesterday. If this goes on we shall have to hire you a litter!"

The girls exchanged satisfied glances; that was the way, leave her
alone; she always came back, as sweet and good-natured as ever.
Susannah repeated her question about the wedding dress.

"It's blue," she said.

"And I didn't choose it. It was my mother's. Mother could never wear
it, it is too long for her and to cut it would have been a shame : it
is such beautiful stuff. My grandfather bought it in Damascus."

"Just blue?" Leah said.

"Isn't that Mary all over? I never knew a girl who cared less about
clothes. Her wedding dress; and it's blue, and beautiful stuff! What
kind of blue and what kind of stuff?"

"It's about the colour of ... of flax flowers, and I think it is
silk."

There were sounds of appreciation, not unmixed with envy. Leah said
sardonically, "She things it is silk!" She and Susannah then began to

speculate as to when it would be their turn, and to describe the
dresses in which they would like to be married. Rachel, looking back
sourly to her own wedding, thought how much more suitable a mourning
robe would have been than all the family finery in which she had been
decked; and, unwilling to talk about marriage, fell into conversation
with Mary about Joshua.

So, chirping like birds they came to the place just where the field
path and the highroad were divided by the out-thrust buttress of bare
reddish rock from which the water sprang. A very ordinary Spring
morning in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of Augustus Caesar.

Years and years of wear from the pressure of the mouths of water-jars