hame in her own
eyes. Rebecca knew quite well that in spite of her hesitation and
remonstrances, in spite of her maiden shrinking on the threshold of
the store, she had come to see William Berry. She had been glad,
although she had turned a hypocritical face towards her own
consciousness, that Ephraim was not well enough and she was obliged
to go. Her heart had leaped with joy when Rose had proposed William's
walking home with her, but when he refused she was crushed with
shame. "He thought I came to see him," she kept saying to herself as
she hurried along, and there was no falsehood that she would not have
sworn to to shield her modesty from such a thought on his part.

When she got home and entered the kitchen, she kept her face turned
away from her mother. "Here's the sugar," she said, and she took it
out of the basket and placed it on the table.

"How much did he give you?" asked Deborah Thayer; she was standing
beside the window beating eggs. Over in the field she could catch a
glimpse of Barnabas now and then between the trees as he passed with
his plough.

"About two pounds."

"That was doin' pretty well."

Rebecca said nothing. She turned to go out of the room.

"Where are you going?" her mother asked, sharply. "Take off your
bonnet. I want you to beat up the butter and sugar; this cake ought
to be in the oven."

Deborah's face, as she beat the eggs and made cake, looked as full of
stern desperation as a soldier's on the battle-field. Deborah never
yielded to any of the vicissitudes of life; she met them in fair
fight like enemies, and vanquished them, not with trumpet and spear,
but with daily duties. It was a village story how Deborah Thayer
cleaned all the windows in the house one afternoon when her first
child had died in the morning. To-day she was in a tumult of wrath
and misery over her son; her mouth was so full of the gall of
bitterness that no sweet on earth could overcome it; but she made
sweet cake.

Rebecca took off her sun-bonnet and hung it on a peg; she got a box
from the pantry, and emptied the sugar into in, still keeping her
face turned away as best she could from her mother's eyes.

Deborah looked approvingly at the sugar. "It's nigher three pounds
than anything else. I guess you were kind of favored, Rebecca. Did
William wait on you?"

"Yes, he did."

"I guess you were kind of favored," Deborah repeated, and a
half-smile came over her grim face.

Rebecca said nothing. She