Deborah rescued her from the stalled conversation with Keturah by coming to whisper to her about how one of the handmaidens was being very forward with some of Abraham’s shepherds. Keturah overheard and started to say, “Oh, let girls be girls,” but Rebekah was already on the way. Let girls be girls? Well, why not let lambs be lambs and wolves be wolves? What would happen to the flocks then? Deborah knew better than Keturah the consequences of letting young people go wherever their desires might lead them. The whole idea of caring for children was to keep them from doing stupid, dangerous, wicked things that could not be undone, until they learned enough self-control and good judgment that they could be expected to make their own decisions. Not one of these girls was at such a point—least of all the one who was flirting, since the very act of enticing a shepherd who had been alone in the hills for weeks or months was proof enough of idiocy.

Naturally, the flirt—Miriel, a girl who was certainly of marriageable age—was pouty and resentful when Rebekah called her away and warned her against giving some shepherd the wrong idea about her availability. But it was one of the other girls who, overhearing it all, made the obvious retort: “It’s easy for you, you’re married!”

“For a day,” said Rebekah. “And what kind of marriage do you think I would have had if I had been the kind of girl who went about flirting with shepherds?”

Miriel gave one sharp bark of a laugh.

“What was funny about that?” asked Rebekah, trying to keep anger out of her voice.

“You were never going to marry a shepherd,” said Miriel. “But that’s who we are going to marry. Like our mothers did.”

It was a telling point. Rebekah started to answer with some kind of explanation about how these shepherds weren’t looking for more than a momentary wife, when she heard Isaac’s voice from behind her. “You’re mistaken, girl,” he said. “That’s exactly what Rebekah did marry.”

Of course all the girls blushed and hid their faces and the sillier ones giggled, but Rebekah realized that of course he was right. She wished she had thought of saying it herself. Except that it was better coming from him; if she had said it, it might have sounded as though she were denigrating her own husband, who was, after all, heir to the birthright, and not just a shepherd at all.