But it was only the trouble in her father's voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber of Naomi's mind.
The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later to her consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer and lighter hand.
She had always loved little children, and since the coming of her hearing she had loved them more than ever.

Their lisping tongues, their pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts, all fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself, though grown to be a lovely maid.

And of all children those she loved best were not the children of the Jews, nor yet the children of the Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged, barefoot, black and olive-skinned mites who came into Tetuan with the country Arabs and Berbers on market mornings.

They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest, and they were most full of joy and wonder.

So she would gather them up in twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays, from the mouths of their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home by the hand.
And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope, suspended from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this Naomi would sport with her little ones.