“Ezra told me last night,” interposed Mrs. Ray. “I had a hard time gettin' it out of him; he promised Ephraim he wouldn't tell. But somethin' he said made me suspect, an' I got it out of him. He said Ephraim told him he run away, an' he left him there slidin' when he came home. 'Twas as much as 'leven o'clock then; I remember I give Ezra a whippin' next mornin' for stayin' out so late. But then, of course, whippin' Ezra wa'n't nothin' like whippin' Ephraim.”
“The doctor says most likely that was what killed him, after all, an' you'd ought to know,” said the doctor's wife.
“Be you sure?” said Deborah again.
“Ephraim wa'n't to blame. He never had no show; he never went a-slidin' like the other little fellers,” said Caleb, suddenly, out of his corner; and he snivelled as he spoke.
Deborah turned on him sharply. “Did you know anything about it?” said she.
“He told me on 't that mornin',” said Caleb; “he told me how he'd been a-slidin', an' how he eat some mince-pie.”
“Eat—some—mince-pie!” gasped Deborah, and there was a great light of hope in her face.
“Well,” said the doctor's wife, “if that boy eat mince-pie, an' slid down hill, too, I guess you ain't much call to worry about anything you've done, Mis' Thayer. I know what the doctor has said right along.”
The doctor's wife arose with a certain mild impressiveness, as if some mantle of her husband's authority had fallen upon her. She shook out her ample skirts as if they were redolent of rhubarb and mint. “Well, I guess we had better be going,” said she, and her inflections were like the doctor's.
Mrs. Ray rose also. “Well, we thought you'd ought to know,” said she.