Although Deborah never asked a question, and although people were shy of alluding to Rebecca, she yet seemed to know, in some occult and instinctive fashion, all about her.

When a funeral procession passed the Thayer house one afternoon Deborah knew quite well whose little coffin was in the hearse, although she could scarcely have said that anybody had told her.

Caleb came to her after dinner, with a strange, defiant air.  “I want a clean dicky, mother; I’m agoin’,” said he.  And Deborah got out the old man’s Sunday clothes for him without a word.  She even brushed his hair with hard, careful strokes, and helped him on with his great-coat; but she never said a word about Rebecca and her baby’s funeral.

“They had some white posies on it,” Caleb volunteered, tremblingly, when he got home.

Deborah made no reply.

“There was quite a lot there,” added Caleb.

“Go an’ bring me in some kindlin’ wood,” said Deborah.

Ephraim stood by, staring alternately at his father and mother.  He had watched the funeral procession pass with furtive interest.

“It won’t hurt you none to make a few lamp-lighters,” said his mother.  “You set right down here, an’ I’ll get you some paper.”

Ephraim clapped his hand to his side, and rolled his eyes agonizingly towards his mother, but she took no notice.  She got some paper out of the cupboard, and Ephraim sat down and began quirling it into long spirals with a wretched sulky air.

Since his sister’s marriage Ephraim had had a sterner experience than had ever fallen to his lot before.  His mother redoubled her discipline over him.  It was as if she had resolved, since all her vigorous training had failed in the case of his sister, that she would intensify it to such purpose that it should not fail with him.

So strait and narrow was the path in which Ephraim was forced to tread those wintry days, so bound and fettered was he by precept and admonition, that it seemed as if his very soul could do no more than shuffle along where his mother pointed.

A scanty and simple diet had Ephraim, and it seemed to him not so much from a solicitude for his health as from a desire to mortify his flesh for the good of his spirit.  Ephraim obeyed perforce; he was sincerely afraid of his mother, but he had within him a dogged and growing resentment against those attempts to improve his spirit.

Not a bit of cake was he allowed to taste.  When the door of a certain closet in which pound-cake for possible guests was always kept in a jar, and had been ever since Ephraim could remember, was opened, the boy’s eyes would fairly glare with desire.  “Jest gimme a little scrap, mother,” he would whine.  He had formerly, on rare occasions, been allowed a small modicum of cake, but now his mother was unyielding.  He got not a crumb; he could only sniff hungrily at the rich, spicy, and fruity aroma which came forth from the closet, and swallow at it vainly and unsatisfactorily with straining palate.