In her husband’s house she would be a stranger. She had no experience with that. She had seen how it was for new servants brought into the house, men who had to prove themselves by the strength of their arm and their way with beasts, women who had to earn their place by more subtle contests, and who even then could never rise within the hierarchy of the household the way new men could. Naturally, as wife she would be at the head of the household women—for even if her face had been ugly as a toad’s back, Father would have seen to it her dowry was enough to place her as first wife. But Rebekah knew perfectly well that being nominal head and actually being the leader of the women were two different things. Here, she had grown up among the women, pampered because she was the youngest, the daughter of the house, and motherless as well. Finally, after Father became deaf, she asserted herself as mistress of the house of Bethuel and the women understood that she needed to take that role. They did not resist her. But she had always known these women and they knew her, too. She was never, not for a moment of her life, a stranger.

“I don’t want to leave home,” she told Deborah.

Deborah nodded wisely. “It’s hard to leave home, even to go to your uncle’s house.”

“But you did it,” said Rebekah.

“There was a baby who needed me.”

“There’s none who need me.”

“There will be, silly,” said Deborah. “That’s why you get married, so you can have babies you can keep.”

“What kind of man will marry me, Deborah? A man from a great herding household? Then I’ll always be pitching a tent and packing it up again, or if they settle down near a town, they’ll have a house there, and what do I know about tending a place with hard walls and a roof, and neighbors living just steps from the door?”

“Maybe you’ll marry somebody like your father, who stays in one place but lives in a tent.”

“There’s hardly anyone like Father.”

“I’ve never been to a town,” said Deborah.

“You haven’t missed a thing,” said Rebekah.