“I’m gettin’ most out of patience; I dunno what ails her.  I’m goin’ to have the doctor if this keeps on,” returned Deborah.

Ephraim, sucking a stick of candy brought to him from Bolton, cast a strange glance at his mother—­a glance compounded of shrewdness and terror; but she did not see it.

It snowed hard all night; in the morning the snow was quite deep, and there was no appearance of clearing.  As soon as the breakfast dishes were put away, Deborah got out the crimson thibet.  She had learned the tailoring and dressmaking trade in her youth, and she always cut and fitted the garments for the family.

She worked assiduously; by the middle of the forenoon the dress was ready to be tried on.  Ephraim and his father were out in the barn, she and Rebecca were alone in the house.

She made Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she began fitting the crimson gown to her.  Rebecca stood drooping heavily, her eyes cast down.  Suddenly her mother gave a great start, pushed the girl violently from her, and stood aloof.  She did not speak for a few minutes; the clock ticked in the dreadful silence.  Rebecca cast one glance at her mother, whose eyes seemed to light the innermost recesses of her being to her own vision; then she would have looked away, but her mother’s voice arrested her.

“Look at me,” said Deborah.  And Rebecca looked; it was like uncovering a disfigurement or a sore.

“What—­ails you?” said her mother, in a terrible voice.

Then Rebecca turned her head; her mother’s eyes could not hold her any longer.  It was as if her very soul shrank.

“Go out of this house,” said her mother, after a minute.

Rebecca did not make a sound.  She went, bending as if there were a wind at her back impelling her, across the kitchen in her quilted petticoat and her crimson thibet waist, her white arms hanging bare.  She opened the door that led towards her own bedroom, and passed out.

Presently Deborah, still standing where Rebecca had left her, heard the front door of the house shut.  After a few minutes she took the broom from its peg in the corner, went through the icy north parlor, past Rebecca’s room, to the front door.  The snow heaped on the outer threshold had fallen in when Rebecca opened it, and there was a quantity on the entry floor.

Deborah opened the door again, and swept out the snow carefully; she even swept the snow off the steps outside, but she never cast a glance up or down the road.  Then she beat the snow off the broom, and went in and locked the door behind her.

On her way back to the kitchen she paused at Rebecca’s little bedroom.  The waist of the new gown lay on the bad.  She took it out into the kitchen, and folded it carefully with the skirt and the pieces; then she carried it up to the garret and laid it away in a chest.

When Caleb and Ephraim came in from the barn they found Deborah sitting at the window knitting a stocking.  She did not look up when they entered.