No, no, they served God, all the descendants of Terah, and that meant that they did not sacrifice human beings and regarded all children’s lives as sacred, even those born in bastardy. Those who served God did not take the lives of the innocent, certainly not for the mere convenience of the baby daughter of a powerful man.

Deborah’s baby must have died, that’s all. Perhaps God in his mercy took one child to himself so that Deborah could have the care of a little girl that she could stay with forever, instead of a little boy who would have been taken from her as soon as he was weaned.

“Poor Deborah,” said Rebekah. “I didn’t know you lost a baby. That must be the hardest thing in the world.”

“I didn’t lose him,” said Deborah. “I took very good care of him. I always knew where he was and whenever he cried I fed him. God wanted him, that’s all. Father didn’t want my baby around the camp, he got angry whenever he saw me with him, so God took my little boy to his own house where he could love him all the time.”

“Who told you that?” asked Rebekah. Whoever it was had been very kind to Deborah, to tell her a story so filled with comfort.

“Nobody had to tell me, silly,” said Deborah. “That’s just the way God is. Everybody knows that.”

“God doesn’t always do nice things,” said Rebekah. She felt wretched immediately for saying so, and not just because Deborah looked so dismayed.

“God does only good things,” Deborah insisted.

Although she already felt bad about it, Rebekah was in a defiant mood and refused to back down. “Not to me. It wasn’t nice to make me beautiful.”

“He gave you a beautiful face because you have a beautiful soul,” said Deborah. “I heard Uncle Bethuel say so.”

Rebekah realized at once what this had to mean to Deborah. Since she had been told God made her ugly, wouldn’t that imply to her that it was because she had an ugly soul? It made Rebekah angry, to realize that Deborah had lived all her life with the sort of things being said right to her face that Belbai had written about Rebekah. Deborah should not have to believe such things.

“I’d rather be good than beautiful,” said Rebekah, “and you are good.”

“You’re good and beautiful.”

“I’m not either one,” said Rebekah. “I’m not really beautiful, either, because I’ll get old just like everybody else and if I get married I’ll have babies and get fat and nobody will think I’m beautiful then. So beautiful is not something I am, it’s just something I have to put up with for now.”

Deborah reached out and touched her face. “You’re my pretty girl,” she said. “Always and always.”