Caleb came to her after dinner, with a strange, defiant air. “I want a clean dicky, mother; I'm agoin',” said he. And Deborah got out the old man's Sunday clothes for him without a word. She even brushed his hair with hard, careful strokes, and helped him on with his great-coat; but she never said a word about Rebecca and her baby's funeral.
“They had some white posies on it,” Caleb volunteered, tremblingly, when he got home.
Deborah made no reply.
“There was quite a lot there,” added Caleb.
“Go an' bring me in some kindlin' wood,” said Deborah.
Ephraim stood by, staring alternately at his father and mother. He had watched the funeral procession pass with furtive interest.
“It won't hurt you none to make a few lamp-lighters,” said his mother. “You set right down here, an' I'll get you some paper.”
Ephraim clapped his hand to his side, and rolled his eyes agonizingly towards his mother, but she took no notice. She got some paper out of the cupboard, and Ephraim sat down and began quirling it into long spirals with a wretched sulky air.
Since his sister's marriage Ephraim had had a sterner experience than had ever fallen to his lot before. His mother redoubled her discipline over him. It was as if she had resolved, since all her vigorous training had failed in the case of his sister, that she would intensify it to such purpose that it should not fail with him.
So strait and narrow was the path in which Ephraim was forced to tread those wintry days, so bound and fettered was he by precept and admonition, that it seemed as if his very soul could do no more than shuffle along where his mother pointed.