Children of the Old Testament | Page 9

rings, for she was going to bathe, and her brown eyes looked with pleasure upon the cool waters of the broad river.
She did not notice the Hebrew girl sitting on the sand as she walked along the river's bank; but in a few moments she saw a strange little black object floating among the green flags, and at once sent some of her maidens to bring the strange thing to her.
Running down to the water, the girls lifted out the little dripping basket, wondering what was in it that made it feel so heavy; but soon a little cry from within told them, and they went quickly with their burden to the princess, to ask what they should do with it.
The dark eyes of the Hebrew girl were watching them as she sat playing at odd and even with round stones from the river--a favourite game of the children of Egypt. She saw them bring the basket to the princess. She saw her smile, and noticed her pleased cry when they opened the lid; and she heard her speaking kindly to the little child, which was crying loudly. The girls were crowding round the open basket, looking in at the child; and when they placed the basket upon the ground and looked about them in doubt, Miriam knew that her time had come, and went timidly forward.
"This is one of the Hebrew children," the gentle princess said, with pity in her voice, as she looked at the baby's red cheeks, so different from the brown cheeks of the Egyptian babies. The little boy still wept loudly, and the princess's heart was touched, for he would not stop crying. What was to be done?
Running with bare feet upon the hot sand, Miriam, clad in the rough red and blue of a Hebrew slave girl, drew near to the princess, and kneeling down at a little distance, said,--
"Shall I run and call a nurse from among the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?"
The princess knew that such baby boys were to be thrown into the river; but perhaps the meaning of it all dawned upon her as she talked with her maidens, for she turned with a smile to the kneeling girl, and said simply, "Go."
With light feet and a beating heart Miriam sped away to the spot where her mother was hiding, calling to her in Hebrew as she went to come quickly. The princess and her maidens looked with amusement at the Hebrew woman as she came swiftly forward and knelt before them; and the whole of the mother's little plot was clearly seen in her blushing cheeks and tear-filled eyes. This clever little slave girl had found a Hebrew nurse very, very quickly!
"Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages," the princess said to the kneeling woman; and she smiled again when the little child ceased weeping and held up his little chubby arms as soon as this Hebrew woman's face bent over him. She was indeed the mother, but the princess would tell no one, for thenceforth the boy was to be as her own child.
When the little child grew up this good princess took him into her lovely palace to be her son; and she called him Moses, because that name meant that he was taken out of the water. And there is a pretty story told about this same princess by an old Jewish writer, though it is not to be found in our Bible.
He says that the princess was so proud of the boy that one day she brought the little fellow to her father the king, that he might see how beautiful he was. The king took off his golden crown and put it on the child's curly head; but the little boy took it off again, and putting it upon the ground, tried to stand upon it, which amused the king and his courtiers very much. The old Jewish writer says that this showed how the little boy would one day force this king to set free the Hebrews, which indeed he did, as the Bible tells us. For Moses became, when he grew up, the great leader of the Israelites, who led them out of Egypt to the promised land of Canaan, where in time, after much fighting, they founded a kingdom of their own.

RUTH THE GLEANER.
In the days before there was a king in Israel a woman called Naomi, whose name means "the pleasant," lived in the little village of Bethlehem; and when at one time food was scarce, she left the place with her husband and two sons, and went over into the land of Moab, where there was plenty of food to eat.
For ten years she lived