The girl became frightened, not so much of her aunt as of God. The simple child's prayer for the keeping of her soul which she had been in the habit of repeating morning and evening became a terror to her, because she did not understand her aunt's phraseology. The "soul" it dealt with was not herself, her thoughts, feelings, and powers, but a mysterious something apart from these, for whose welfare these must all be sacrificed.
Susannah had heard of fairies and ghosts; she inclined to shove this sort of soul into the same unreal region. The dreary artificial heaven, which seemed to follow logically if she accepted the basal fact of a soul separated from all her natural powers, could be dispensed with also. This was her hope, but she was not sure. How could she be sure when she was so young and dependent? It was almost her only solace to interpret Ephraim's silence by her own unbelief, and she rested her weary mind against her vague notions of Ephraim's support.
One August day Mrs. Croom drove with her husband to a distant funeral.
In the afternoon when the sunshine was falling upon the fields of maize, when the wind was busy setting their ribbon-like leaves flapping, and rocking the tree-tops, Ephraim Croom was disturbed in his private room by the blustering entrance of Susannah.
The room was an attic; the windows of the gable looked west; slanting windows in the shingle roof looked north and south. The room was large and square, spare of furniture, lined with books. At a square table in the centre sat Ephraim.
When Susannah entered a gust of wind came with her. The handkerchief folded across her bosom was blown awry. Her sun-bonnet had slipped back upon her neck; her ringlets were tossed.
"Cousin Ephraim, my aunt has gone; come out and play with me." Then she added more disconsolately, "I am lonely; I want you to talk to me, cousin."
The gust had lifted Ephraim's papers and shed them upon the floor. He looked down at them without moving. Life in a world of thoughts in which his fellows took no interest, had produced in him a singularly undemonstrative manner.
Susannah's red lips were pouting. "Come, cousin, I am so tired of myself."
But Ephraim had been privately accused of amative emotions. Offended with his mother, mortified he knew not why, uncertain of his own feeling, as scholars are apt to be, he had no wish then but to retire.