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.
A scanty and simple diet had Ephraim, and it seemed to him not so
much from a solicitude for his health as from a desire to mortify his
flesh for the good of his spirit. Ephraim obeyed perforce; he was
sincerely afraid of his mother, but he had within him a dogged and
growing resentment against those attempts to improve his spirit.
Not a bit of cake was he allowed to taste. When the door of a certain
closet in which pound-cake for possible guests was always kept in a
jar, and had been ever since Ephraim could remember, was opened, the
boy's eyes would fairly glare with desire. "Jest gimme a little
scrap, mother," he would whine. He had formerly, on rare occasions,
been allowed a small modicum of cake, but now his mother was
unyielding. He got not a crumb; he could only sniff hungrily at the
rich, spicy, and fruity aroma which came forth from the closet, and
swallow at it vainly and unsatisfactorily with straining palate.
Ephraim was not allowed a soft-stoned plum from a piece of mince-pie;
the pie had always been tabooed. He was not even allowed to pick over
the plums for the pies, unless under the steady watch of his mother's
eyes.
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