Two from Galilee Read Free Page B

nobody's really a woman until she's lost her maidenhood. When that happens let us know, that's when we'll celebrate!"
    Mary flushed. You must be thick-skinned to be a Galilean woman. You must not mind these jokes. Modesty quarreled constantly with this brash discussion of the state they seemed to value above all else. The coming to bed with a man, the loving and begetting. But how could she blame them when her own thoughts could dwell on little else? Cleophas, Abner, the others, but above all, Joseph. Adored as a child, dreamed of as she grew older, scarcely daring to hope. Her friend, yes, but perhaps her friend too long. One day she had summoned the courage to ask him, "Why haven't you ever been betrothed?"
    "Can't you guess?" he smiled. "I'm waiting for you, little Mary."
    After that it was their secret, almost too precious to discuss. Yet a baffling change had come over him these past months; he avoided her, she never heard his voice except in the synagogue. Wherefore? she thought in mystified desolation. Why, why? Had she done something to offend him? Or was he bowing to Hannah's snubbing, too proud to beg for what he thought he could not win? Heartsick at the prospect, Mary swung the bucket over the worn stone lip of the well and drew it up. Or had he changed his mind? The prospect was staggering. Could it be that Joseph had at last found somebody else?
    Hoisting the moist weight of her jug to her head, she fell into step with Deborah, who had shooed her little sister ahead so that they could talk as they climbed the hill. The child was plainly disgruntled, and although Mary felt sorry for her she was grateful. She was anxious to question Deborah, whose high white forehead and long elegant nose seemed almost to sprout antennae, so alert was she to all the latest gossip. Deborah would have heard.
    But Deborah was also vastly filled with herself, and today she babbled of Aaron, her betrothed. He was just back from Magdala and had brought her a cashmere shawl. "And he's ordering a chest made for me, of the finest camphorwood."
    Mary swallowed. "Who's making it?"
    "Now wouldn't you like to know? Who else but Joseph? Aaron wouldn't trust anybody else." She moved along with the grace of a mountain cat. Her cool alert yellow eyes toyed with Mary, seeking her reaction. Then she rushed back to Aaron, the stone house he was going to have ready in the fall, what an importunate lover he was getting to be.
    How she runs on, Mary thought, with a kind of pitying impatience. How she exaggerates. And she thought of Aaron, pudgy and slow-witted, despite his high good humor and his generosity. People loved and despised him vaguely, including Deborah herself.
    She said with a shade too much enthusiasm, "Aaron will make a splendid husband. You're lucky your parents chose such a good man for you. As for the chest," she blurted, "when is Joseph starting? You'll want to see how it's coming, won't you? Let's go together to the shop."
    "I knew I'd trap you!" Deborah turned on her in triumph if not in sympathy. "Come now, Mary, you can't go hanging around after him when it's plain there'll never be anything between you."
    "Why is it so plain?" Mary demanded. Her whole body ached from the weight of the cold jug. "Do you mean you've heard something I should know?" She had an almost superstitious faith in the powers of her cousin. Better even to face the worst than go on enduring this mystery.
    "If you mean have I found out he's asked for someone else? No," Deborah admitted flatly. "There was nothing to that talk about Leah. I got it straight from Aaron who got it from Joseph's brother. Leah's father wanted the match and frankly Joseph's parents would have been relieved. But they yielded to his argument that he wasn't ready to marry. Not ready," she scoffed, "at twenty-one and past." Again she darted a tantalizing glance at Mary. "Though if he takes after his father he'll never be able to provide much for a wife. And he's never laid anything by for a