hem, and she ushered them up the stairs and into a room that actually
had two windows cut in the side. They were the first windows Naomi had
ever looked from, and she held tight to the sill for fear of falling
into the street below.

"I would that I had windows in my house," thought Naomi ruefully. "I
would be so proud if I were Martha. But then she has no brother Ezra nor
baby Jonas to play with her."

In spite of the windows little Martha did not seem at all proud. She
helped her mother bring bowls of water for the guests to wash in, and
when the meal was ready she patted the plump cushions into shape on the
divans placed before the gayly painted table.

"Sit by me," she whispered to Naomi, breaking off a neat three-cornered
piece of barley cake which was to serve Naomi as knife and fork and
spoon.

For dinner there was a dish of young kid stewed with olives, hot barley
cakes, fresh and dried fruit--apricots, figs, pomegranates--and a bowl
of amber honey.

Not an easy thing is it to serve one's self with neatness and dispatch
without knife or fork, and only one's fingers and a bit of bread to
rely upon. But Naomi and Martha were able to dip their food from the
common dish with a bit of barley cake quite as nicely as the grown
people did, and they sat quiet and respectful while Aunt Miriam told of
Simon's illness and the reason for this trip to Jerusalem.

When the meal was over, Martha ran for fresh bowls of water, for the
Jews were careful to wash both before and after eating, and as Naomi
dabbled her fingers daintily Martha whispered to her:

"Mother says we are all to go about the twelfth hour, in the cool of the
day, to show thee the Temple and to see King Herod's garden. Oh! Oh!"

And she squeezed her new friend's arm with such fervor that the pretty
bowl was barely saved from falling to the floor.

Later in the day when the first evening breezes were drifting down the
dark ravines that swept round the city, the little party of sight-seers
slowly climbed the steep lanes that led toward Mount Moriah on which the
Temple stood. Built of white marble and glittering with gold, it dazzled
the eyes of little village-bred Naomi and made her heart thrill as she
gazed up the flights of steps at the very House of God.

It was a flat-roofed, oblong building, this Temple of the Hebrews,
divided within by a curtain of the finest work into two great rooms, the
Holy of Holies and the Holy Place.

The Holy of Holies