“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.”