There was one whole day during which Ephraim toiled, laboriously
conning over the majestic sentences in loud whispers, and received
thereby only a vague impression and maudlin hope that he himself
might be one of the elect of which they treated, because he was so
strenuously deprived of plums in this life, and might therefore
reasonably expect his share of them in the life to come.
That day poor Ephraim--glancing between whiles at some boys out
coasting over in a field, down a fine icy slope, hearing now and then
their shouts of glee--had a certain sense of superiority and
complacency along with the piteous and wistful longing which always
abode in his heart.
"Maybe," thought Ephraim, half unconsciously, not framing the thought
in words to his mind--"maybe if I am a good boy, and don't have any
plums, nor go out coasting like them, I shall go to heaven, and maybe
they won't." Ephraim's poor purple face at the window-pane took on a
strange, serious expression as he evolved his childish tenet of
theology. His mother came in from another room. "Have you got that
learned?" said she, and Ephraim bent over his task again.
Ephraim had not been quite as well as usual this winter, and his
mother had been more than usually anxious about him. She called the
doctor in finally, and followed him out into the cold entry when he
left.
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