The doctor hesitated.  He was an old man with a moderate manner.  He buttoned his old great-coat, redolent of drugs, closer, his breath steamed out in the frosty entry.  “I guess you had better be a little careful about getting him excited,” he said at last, evasively.  “You had better get along as easy as you can with him.”  The doctor’s manner implied more than his words; he had his own opinion of Deborah Thayer’s sternness of rule, and he had sympathy with Rebecca.

Deborah seemed to have an intuition of it, for she looked at him, and raised her voice after a manner which would have become the Deborah of the scriptures.

“What would you have me do?” she demanded.  “Would you have me let him have his own way if it were for the injury of his soul?” It was curious that Deborah, as she spoke, seemed to look only at the spiritual side of the matter.  The idea that her discipline was actually necessary for her son’s bodily weal did not occur to her, and she did not urge it as an argument.

“I guess you had better be a little careful and get along as easy as you can,” repeated the doctor, opening the door.

“That ain’t all that’s to be thought of,” said Deborah, with stern and tragic emphasis, as the doctor went out.

“What did the doctor say, mother?” Ephraim inquired, when she went into the room again.  He looked half scared, half important, as he sat in the great rocking-chair by the fire.  He breathed short, and his words were disconnected as he spoke.

His mother, for answer, took the catechism from the shelf, and extended it towards him with a decisive thrust of her arm.

“It is time you studied some more,” said she.

Ephraim jerked himself away from the proffered book.  “I don’t want to study any more now, mother,” he whined.

“Take it,” said Deborah.

Caleb was paring apples for pies on the other side of the hearth.  Ephraim looked across at him desperately.  “I want to play holly-gull with father,” he said.

“Ephraim!”

“Can’t I play holly-gull with father jest a little while?”

“You take this book and study your lesson,” said Deborah, between nearly closed lips.

Ephraim began to weep; he took the book with a vicious snatch and an angry sob.  “Won’t never let me do anythin’ I want to,” he cried, convulsively.

“Not another word,” said Deborah.  Ephraim bent over his catechism with half-suppressed sobs.  He dared not weep aloud.  Deborah went into the pantry with the medicine-bottle which the doctor had left; she wanted a spoon.  Caleb caught hold of her dress as she was passing him.

“What is it?” said she.

“Look here, jest a minute, mother.”

“I can’t stop, father; Ephraim has got to have his medicine.”

“Jest look here a minute, mother.”

Deborah bent her head impatiently, and Caleb whispered.  “No, he can’t; I told him he couldn’t,” she said aloud, and passed on into the pantry.