Caleb read on ponderously.
"Where ye goin', Barney?" Ephraim inquired, with a chuckle and a
grin, over the back of his chair.
"Ephraim!" repeated his mother. Her blue eyes frowned around his
sister at him under their heavy sandy brows.
Ephraim twisted himself back into position. "Jest wanted to know
where he was goin'," he muttered.
Barnabas stood by the window brushing his fine bell hat with a white
duck's wing. He was a handsome youth; his profile showed clear and
fine in the light, between the sharp points of his dicky bound about
by his high stock. His cheeks were as red as his sister's.
When he put on his hat and opened the door, his mother herself
interrupted Caleb's reading.
"Don't you stay later than nine o'clock, Barnabas," said she.
The young man murmured something unintelligibly, but his tone was
resentful.
"I ain't going to have you out as long as you were last Sabbath
night," said his mother, in quick return. She jerked her chin down
heavily as if it were made of iron.
Barnabas went out quickly, and shut the door with a thud.
[Illustration: "Barnabas went out quickly"]
"If he was a few years younger, I'd make him come back an' shut that
door over again," said his mother.
Caleb read on; he was reading now one of the imprecatory psalms.
Deborah's blue eyes gleamed with warlike energy as she listened: she
confused King David's enemies with those people who crossed her own
will.
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