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.