“Do you remember that time he killed the cat because she had scratched him?”

“Yes.  Don’t!”

Then Caroline reentered the room.  She went up to the stove in which a wood fire was burning—­it was a cold, gloomy day of fall—­ and she warmed her hands, which were reddened from recent washing in cold water.

Mrs. Brigham looked at her and hesitated.  She glanced at the door, which was still ajar, as it did not easily shut, being still swollen with the damp weather of the summer.  She rose and pushed it together with a sharp thud which jarred the house.  Rebecca started painfully with a half exclamation.  Caroline looked at her disapprovingly.

“It is time you controlled your nerves, Rebecca,” said she.

“I can’t help it,” replied Rebecca with almost a wail.  “I am nervous.  There’s enough to make me so, the Lord knows.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Caroline with her old air of sharp suspicion, and something between challenge and dread of its being met.

Rebecca shrank.

“Nothing,” said she.

“Then I wouldn’t keep speaking in such a fashion.”

Emma, returning from the closed door, said imperiously that it ought to be fixed, it shut so hard.

“It will shrink enough after we have had the fire a few days,” replied Caroline.  “If anything is done to it it will be too small; there will be a crack at the sill.”

“I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did to Edward,” said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible voice.

“Hush!” said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed door.

“Nobody can hear with the door shut.”

“He must have heard it shut, and—­”

“Well, I can say what I want to before he comes down, and I am not afraid of him.”

“I don’t know who is afraid of him!  What reason is there for anybody to be afraid of Henry?” demanded Caroline.

Mrs. Brigham trembled before her sister’s look.  Rebecca gasped again.  “There isn’t any reason, of course.  Why should there be?”

“I wouldn’t speak so, then.  Somebody might overhear you and think it was queer.  Miranda Joy is in the south parlour sewing, you know.”

“I thought she went upstairs to stitch on the machine.”

“She did, but she has come down again.”

“Well, she can’t hear.”

“I say again I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself.  I shouldn’t think he’d ever get over it, having words with poor Edward the very night before he died.  Edward was enough sight better disposition than Henry, with all his faults.  I always thought a great deal of poor Edward, myself.”

Mrs. Brigham passed a large fluff of handkerchief across her eyes; Rebecca sobbed outright.

“Rebecca,” said Caroline admonishingly, keeping her mouth stiff and swallowing determinately.

“I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to Henry that last night.  I don’t know, but he did from what Rebecca overheard,” said Emma.