As Peter has told you, James interrupted, there be no water here, not a spring nor a rivulet, nothing in which a fish could live; we’re fishermen stranded in a desert without boats or nets, which would be of no use to us, nor am I gainsaying it; but if he gives himself as a victim how shall we get back to Galilee?  He now talks not of these matters to us, but of his Father only, and of doing his Father’s will.  He seems to have forgotten us, and everything else but his Father and his Father’s will, and we cannot make him understand when we try that we shall want money, that money will be wanting to get us back to Galilee, nor does he hear us when we say:  our nets and our boats may have passed into other hands.  We know not what is come over him; he’s a changed man; a lamb as long as you’re agreeing with him, but at a word of contradiction he’s all claws and teeth.

The walk is a long one, Matthew interjected, and the taxes will be collected by the time we get back if the Kingdom don’t come, and sore of foot I’ll be sitting in a desolate house without wife or children or fire in the hearth.  But we have faith, they all cried out together, and having followed Jesus so far we’ll follow him to the end.  But we are glad, Sirs, James said, that you’ve come, for you’ll see Jesus and tell him that we would like to have a word from him as to when we may expect the Kingdom; and a word, too, as to what it will be like; whether there’ll be rivers and lakes well stocked with fish in it, and whether our chairs shall be set; Peter on the Master’s right hand to be sure, we are all agreed as to that.  But you remember, Master, our mother, Salome, how she took Jesus aside and said that myself and John were to be on his left with Andrew one below us?  Peter began to raise his voice, and, straightening his shoulders, he declared that his brother Andrew must sit on Jesus’ left.  You remember, Master?  I remember, Joseph interrupted, that the Master answered you all saying that every chair had been made and caned and cushioned before the world was.  You can’t have forgotten, Peter, this saying:  that every one would find a chair according to his measure?  Yes, Master, he did say something like that.  I’m far from saying we’d all sit equally easy in the same chairs, and if the chairs were before the world was, all I can say is that there seems to have been a lack of foresight, for how could God himself know what our backsides would be like years upon years before they came into being.

About that we will speak later; but now point out the house of Simon the Leper to us where Jesus lodges, Joseph asked.  You see yon house, James replied, and they went forward together, meeting on the way thither several apostles and many disciples; and these accompanied Joseph and Nicodemus to the door, telling them the while that Jesus had driven them out of the house.  It is a main struggle that is going by in him, Philip said, and so we left him, being afraid