nd in stores gawpin'
while women-folks was tradin'," said she. She would not allow Ephraim
to go, although he pleaded hard. It was quite a cold day, and she was
afraid of the sharp air for his laboring breath.

A little after noon she set forth, all alone in the chaise, slapping
the reins energetically over the white horse's back, a thick green
veil tied over her bonnet under her chin, and the thin, sharp wedge
of face visible between the folds crimsoning in the frosty wind.

While she was gone Rebecca sat beside the window and sewed, Caleb
shelled corn in the chimney-corner, and Ephraim made a pretence of
helping him. "You set down an' help your father shell corn while I am
gone," his mother had sternly ordered.

Occasionally Ephraim addressed whining remonstrances to his father,
and begged to be allowed to go out-of-doors, and Caleb would quiet
him with one effectual rejoinder: "You know she won't like it if you
do, sonny. You know what she said."

Caleb, as he shelled the corn with the pottering patience of old age
and constitutional slowness, glanced now and then at his daughter in
the window. He thought she looked very badly, and he had all the time
lately the bewildered feeling of a child who sees in a familiar face
the marks of emotions unknown to it.

"Don't you feel as well as common to-day, Rebecca?" he asked once,
and cleared his throat.

"I don't feel sick, as I know of, any day," replied Rebecca, shortly,
and her face reddened.

As she sewed she looked out now and then at the wild December day,
the trees reeling in the wind, and the sky driving with the leaden
clouds. It was too cold and too windy to snow all the afternoon, but
towards night it moderated, and the wind died down. When Mrs. Thayer
came home it was snowing quite hard, and her green veil was white
when she entered the kitchen. She took it off and shook it,
sputtering moisture in the fireplace.

"There's goin' to be a hard storm; it's lucky I went to-day," said
she. "I kept the dress under the buffalo-robe, an' that ain't hurt
any."

Deborah waxed quite angry, when she proudly shook out the soft
gleaming crimson lengths of thibet, because Rebecca showed so little
interest in it. "You don't deserve to have a new dress; you act like
a stick of wood," she said.

Rebecca made no reply. Presently, when she had gone out of the room
for something, Caleb said, anxiously, "I guess she don't feel quite
so well as common to-night."

"I'm ge