Elisha understood her, though she spoke in the Little-Russian dialect.

“I came in for a drink of water, servant of God,” he said.

“There’s no one⁠—no one⁠—we have nothing to fetch it in. Go your way.”

Then Elisha asked:

“Is there no one among you, then, well enough to attend to that woman?”

“No, we have no one. My son is dying outside, and we are dying in here.”

The little boy had ceased crying when he saw the stranger, but when the old woman began to speak, he began again, and clutching hold of her sleeve cried:

“Bread, Granny, bread.”