NAOMI'S BLINDNESS Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself, and to put out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than a child untaught in the ways of speech.

She tripped and stammered and broke down, and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must do, only quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because she was a girl and not a babe.

And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and thinking shame of it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her father when she halted in her talk with him, and still more humbled by Ali's impetuous help when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back again on silence.
Hardly could she be got to speak at all.

For some days after the night when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond "Yes" and "No," notwithstanding Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings, and Habeebah's breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst of the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he had possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.
"Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak," Israel would say.
His appeals were useless.

Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred.