s life, and might therefore
reasonably expect his share of them in the life to come.

That day poor Ephraim--glancing between whiles at some boys out
coasting over in a field, down a fine icy slope, hearing now and then
their shouts of glee--had a certain sense of superiority and
complacency along with the piteous and wistful longing which always
abode in his heart.

"Maybe," thought Ephraim, half unconsciously, not framing the thought
in words to his mind--"maybe if I am a good boy, and don't have any
plums, nor go out coasting like them, I shall go to heaven, and maybe
they won't." Ephraim's poor purple face at the window-pane took on a
strange, serious expression as he evolved his childish tenet of
theology. His mother came in from another room. "Have you got that
learned?" said she, and Ephraim bent over his task again.

Ephraim had not been quite as well as usual this winter, and his
mother had been more than usually anxious about him. She called the
doctor in finally, and followed him out into the cold entry when he
left. "He's worse than he has been, ain't he?" she said, abruptly.

The doctor hesitated. He was an old man with a moderate manner. He
buttoned his old great-coat, redolent of drugs, closer, his breath
steamed out in the frosty entry. "I guess you had better be a little
careful about getting him excited," he said at last, evasively. "You
had better get along as easy as you can with him." The doctor's
manner implied more than his words; he had his own opinion of Deborah
Thayer's sternness of rule, and he had sympathy with Rebecca.

Deborah seemed to have an intuition of it, for she looked at him, and
raised her voice after a manner which would have become the Deborah
of the scriptures.

"What would you have me do?" she demanded. "Would you have me let him
have his own way if it were for the injury of his soul?" It was
curious that Deborah, as she spoke, seemed to look only at the
spiritual side of the matter. The idea that her discipline was
actually necessary for her son's bodily weal did not occur to her,
and she did not urge it as an argument.

"I guess you had better be a little careful and get along as easy as
you can," repeated the doctor, opening the door.

"That ain't all that's to be thought of," said Deborah, with stern
and tragic emphasis, as the doctor went out.

"What did the doctor say, mother?" Ephraim inquired, when she went
into the room again. He looked half scared, half imp