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 gettin' most out of patience; I dunno what ails her. I'm goin' to have the doctor if this keeps on,” returned Deborah.
Ephraim, sucking a stick of candy brought to him from Bolton, cast a strange glance at his mother—a glance compounded of shrewdness and terror; but she did not see it.
It snowed hard all night; in the morning the snow was quite deep, and there was no appearance of clearing. As soon as the breakfast dishes were put away, Deborah got out the crimson thibet. She had learned the tailoring and dressmaking trade in her youth, and she always cut and fitted the garments for the family.
She worked assiduously; by the middle of the forenoon the dress was ready to be tried on. Ephraim and his father were out in the barn, she and Rebecca were alone in the house.
She made Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she began fitting the crimson gown to her. Rebecca stood drooping heavily, her eyes cast down. Suddenly her mother gave a great start, pushed the girl violently from her, and stood aloof. She did not speak for a few minutes; the clock ticked in the dreadful silence. Rebecca cast one glance at her mother, whose eyes seemed to light the innermost recesses of her being to her own vision; then she would have looked away, but her mother's voice arrested her.
“Look at me,” said Deborah. And Rebecca looked; it was like uncovering a disfigurement or a sore.