Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his cattle?"

 Again the woman did not see it. And I think that this time she spoke with a jest, as if humouring one who was a little mad. "Give me this water," she said, "so that I will never be thirsty again and will not have to walk to the well day after day." She was jesting with a kind of humouring contempt about eternal things. 