n
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."

"Some folks are rooted so deep in old notions that they can't see
their own ideas over them," declared Deborah. Often when she cooked
in her new stove she inveighed against Hannah Berry's foolishness.

"If Hannah Berry wants to heat up a whole brick oven and work the
whole forenoon to bake a loaf of cake, she can," said she, as she put
the pan of cake in the oven. "Now, you watch this, Rebecca Thayer,
and don't you let it burn, and you get the potatoes ready for
dinner."

"Where are you going, mother?" asked Ephraim.

"I'm just goin' to step out a little way."

"Can't I go too?"

"No; you set still. You ain't fit to walk this mornin'. You know what
the doctor told you."

"It won't hurt me any," whined Ephraim. There were times when the
spirit of rebellion in him made illness and even his final demise
flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they were
so strenuously forbidde