Rebecca said nothing. She turned to go out of the room.

"Where are you going?" her mother asked, sharply. "Take off your bonnet. I want you to beat up the butter and sugar; this cake ought to be in the oven."

Deborah's face, as she beat the eggs and made cake, looked as full of stern desperation as a soldier's on the battle-field. Deborah never yielded to any of the vicissitudes of life; she met them in fair fight like enemies, and vanquished them, not with trumpet and spear, but with daily duties. It was a village story how Deborah Thayer cleaned all the windows in the house one afternoon when her first child had died in the morning. To-day she was in a tumult of wrath and misery over her son; her mouth was so full of the gall of bitterness that no sweet on earth could overcome it; but she made sweet cake.

Rebecca took off her sun-bonnet and hung it on a peg; she got a box from the pantry, and emptied the sugar into in, still keeping her face turned away as best she could from her mother's eyes.

Deborah looked approvingly at the sugar. "It's nigher three pounds than anything else. I guess you were kind of favored, Rebecca. Did William wait on you?"

"Yes, he did."

"I guess you were kind of favored," Deborah repeated, and a half-smile came over her grim face.

Rebecca said nothing. She got some butter, and fell to work with a wooden spoon, creaming the butter and sugar in a brown wooden bowl with swift turns of her strong white wrist. Ephraim watched her sharply; he sat by a window stoning raisins. His mother had forbidden him to eat any, as she thought them injurious to him; but he carefully calculated his chances, and deposited many in his mouth when she watched Barney; but his jaws were always gravely set when she turned his way.

Ephraim's face had a curious bluish cast, as if his blood were the color of the juice of a grape. His chest heaved shortly and heavily.

The village doctor had told is mother that he had heart-disease, which might prove fatal, although there was a chance of his outgrowing it, and Deborah had set her face against that.

Ephraim's face, in spite of its sickly hue, had a perfect healthiness and naturalness of expression, which insensibly gave confidence to his friends, although it aroused their irritation. A spirit of boyish rebellion and importance looked out of Ephraim's black eyes; his mouth was demure with mischief, his gawky figure perpetually uneasy and twisting, as if to find entrance into small forbidden places.

There was something in Ephraim's face, when she looked suddenly at him, which continually led his mother to infer that he had been transgressing. "What have you been doin', Ephraim?" she would call out, sharply, many a time, with no just grounds for suspicion, and be utterly routed by Ephraim's innocent, wondering grin in response.

The boy was set about with restrictions which made his life miserable, but the labor of picking over plums for a cake was quite to his taste. He dearly loved plums, although they were especially prohibited. He rolled one quietly under his tongue, and watched Rebecca with sharp eyes. She could scarcely keep her face turned away from him and her mother too.

"Say, mother, Rebecca's been cryin'!" Ephraim announced, suddenly.

Deborah turned and looked at Rebecca's face bending lower over the wooden bowl; her black lashes rested on red circles, and her lips were swollen.

"I'd like to know what you've been cryin' about," said Deborah. It was odd that she did not think that Rebecca's grief might be due to the worry over Barney; but she did not for a minute. She directly attributed it to some personal and strictly selfish consideration which should arouse her animosity.

"Nothing," said Rebecca, with sulky misery.

"Yes, you've been cryin' about something, too. I want to know what 'tis."

"Nothing. I wish you wouldn't, mother."

"Did you see William Berry over to the store?"

"I told you I did once."

"Well, you needn't bite my head off. Did he say anything to you?"

"He weighed out the sugar. I know one thing: I'll never set my foot inside that store again as long as I live!"

"I'd like to know what you mean, Rebecca Thayer."

"I ain't going to have folks think I'm running after William Berry."

"I'd like to know who thinks you are. If it's Hannah Berry, she needn't talk, after the way her daughter has chased over here. Mebbe it's all you Rose Berry has been to see, but I've had my doubts. What did Hannah Berry say to you?"

"She didn't say anything. I haven't seen her."

"What was it, then?"

But Rebecca would not tell her mother what the trouble had been; she could not bring herself to reveal how William had been urged to walk home with her and how coldly he had refused, and finally Deborah, in spite of baffled interest, turned upon her. "Well, I hope you didn't do anything unbecoming," said she.

"Mother, you know better."

"Well, I hope you didn't."

"Mother, I won't stand being talked to so!"

"I rather think I shall talk to you all I think I ought to for your own good," said Deborah, with fierce persistency. "I ain't goin' to have any daughter of mine doin' anything bold and forward, if I know it."

Rebecca was weeping quite openly now. "Mother, you know you sent me down to the store yourself; there wasn't anybody else to go," she sobbed out.

"Your goin' to the store wa'n't anything. I guess you can go to the store to trade off some eggs for sugar when I'm makin' cake without William Berry thinkin' you're runnin' after him, or Hannah Berry thinkin' so either. But there wa'n't any need of your makin' any special talk with him, or lookin' as if you was tickled to death to see him."

"I didn't. I wouldn't go across the room to see William Berry. You haven't any right to say such things to me, mother."

"I guess I've got a right to talk to my own daughter. I should think things had come to a pretty pass if I can't speak when I see you doin' out of the way. I know one thing, you won't go to that store again. I'll go myself next time. Have you got that butter an' sugar mixed up?"

"I hope you will go, I'm sure. I don't want to," returned Rebecca.

She had stopped crying, but her face was burning; she hit the spoon with dull thuds against the wooden bowl.

"Don't you be saucy. That's done enough; give it here."

Deborah finished the cake with a master hand. When she measured the raisins which Ephraim had stoned she cast a sharp glance at him, but he was ready for it with beseechingly upturned sickly face. "Can't I have just one raisin, mother?" he pleaded.

"Yes, you may, if you 'ain't eat any while you was pickin' of 'em over," she answered. And he reached over a thumb and finger and selected a large fat plum, which he ate with ostentatious relish.

Ephraim's stomach oppressed him, his breath came harder, but he had a sense of triumph in his soul. This depriving him of the little creature comforts which he loved, and of the natural enjoyments of boyhood, aroused in him a blind spirit of revolution which he felt virtuous in exercising. Ephraim was absolutely conscienceless with respect to all his stolen pleasures.

Deborah had a cooking-stove. She had a progressive spirit, and when stoves were first introduced had promptly done away with the brick oven, except on occasions when much baking-room was needed. After her new stove was set up in her back kitchen, she often alluded to Hannah Berry's conservative principles with scorn. Hannah's sister, Mrs.

Barnard, had told her how a stove could be set up in the tavern any minute; but Hannah despised new notions. "Hannah won't have one, nohow," said Mrs. Barnard. "I dunno but I would, if Cephas could afford it, and wa'n't set against it. It seems to me it might save a sight of work."

"Some folks are rooted so deep in old notions that they can't see their own ideas over them," declared Deborah. Often when she cooked in her new stove she inveighed against Hannah Berry's foolishness.

"If Hannah Berry wants to heat up a whole brick oven and work the whole forenoon to bake a loaf of cake, she can," said she, as she put the pan of cake in the oven. "Now, you watch this, Rebecca Thayer, and don't you let it burn, and you get the potatoes ready for dinner."

"Where are you going, mother?" asked Ephraim.

"I'm just goin' to step out a little way."

"Can't I go too?"

"No; you set still. You ain't fit to walk this mornin'. You know what the doctor told you."

"It won't hurt me any," whined Ephraim. There were times when the spirit of rebellion in him made illness and even his final demise flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they were so strenuously forbidden.