But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself
suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over
it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little
by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived
her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side
and whisper "Take heart of hope, O Ruth! God does not afflict willingly.
Perhaps the child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is
not dumb. Who shall ye say? Wait and see!"

And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no
difference in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she
would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an
the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the
little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she
would look at the pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and
full as a shell on the shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the
sea was not heard in it, and that all within was silence.

So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
"It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and
see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue
will yet speak to me, and make me very glad." And then an ineffable
serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.

But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar
with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its
little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful
perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child did not open
in seeing, but lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that