“Then,” said Deborah, and as she spoke she began spooning out the toast gravy into a bowl with a curious stiff turn of her wrist and a superfluous vigor of muscle, as if it were molten lead instead of milk; and, indeed, she might, from the look in her face, have been one of her female ancestors in the times of the French and Indian wars, casting bullets with the yells of savages in her ears—­“then,” said she, “I sha’n’t have any child but Ephraim left, that’s all!”

“Mother, don’t!” gasped Rebecca.

“There’s another thing:  if you marry William Berry against your parents’ wishes, you know what you have to expect.  You remember your aunt Rebecca.”

Rebecca twisted her whole body about with the despairing motion with which she would have wrung her hands, flung open the door, and ran out of the room.

Deborah went on spooning up the toast.  Ephraim had come in just as she spoke last to Rebecca, and he stood staring, grinning with gaping mouth.

“What’s Rebecca done, mother?” he asked, pleadingly, catching hold of his mother’s dress.

“Nothin’ for you to know.  Go an’ wash your face an’ hands, an’ come in to supper.”

“Mother, what’s she done?” Ephraim’s pleading voice lengthened into a whine.  He took more liberties with his mother than any one else dared; he even jerked her dress now by way of enforcing an answer.  But she grasped his arm so vigorously that he cried out.  “Go out to the pump, an’ wash your face an’ hands,” she repeated, and Ephraim made a little involuntary run to the door.

As he went out he rolled his eyes over his shoulder at his mother with tragic surprise and reproach, but she paid no attention.  When he came in she ignored the great painful sigh which he heaved and the podgy hand clapped ostentatiously over his left side.  “Draw your chair up,” said she.

“I dunno as I want any supper.  I’ve got a pain.  Oh dear!” Ephraim writhed, with attentive eyes upon his mother; he was like an executioner turning an emotional thumbscrew on her.  But Deborah Thayer’s emotions sometimes presented steel surfaces.  “You can have a pain, then,” said she.  “I ain’t goin’ to let you go to ruin because you ain’t well, not if I know it.  You’ve got to mind, sick or well, an’ you might jest as well know it.  I’ll have one child obey me, whether or no.  Set up to the table.”

Ephraim drew up his chair, whimpering; but he fell to on the milk-toast with ardor, and his hand dropped from his side.  He had eaten half a plateful when his father came in.  Caleb had been milking; the cows had been refractory as he drove them from pasture, and he was late.

“Supper’s been ready half an hour,” his wife said, when he entered.

“The heifer run down the old road when I was a-drivin’ of her home, an’ I had to chase her,” Caleb returned, meekly, settling down in his arm-chair at the table.

“I guess that heifer wouldn’t cut up so every night if I had the drivin’ of her,” remarked Deborah.  She filled a plate with toast and passed it over to Caleb.