After he pushed his chair away he was slipping out shyly, but Deborah stopped him.
"Set down an' finish that corn.

I don't want it clutterin' up the kitchen any longer," said she.
"I thought I'd jest slip out a minute, mother." Deborah motioned him towards the chimney-corner and the baskets of corn with a stern gesture, and Caleb obeyed.

Ephraim, too, settled down beside his father, and fell to shelling corn without being told.
He was quite cowed and intimidated by this strange mood of his mother's, and involuntarily shrank closer to his father when she passed near him.
Caleb and Ephraim both watched Deborah with furtive terror, as she moved about, washing and putting away the dinner-dishes and sweeping the kitchen.
They looked at each other, when, after the after-dinner housework was all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old wool socks of Caleb's over her shoes.

She went out without saying a word.

Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her; then he ran to the window.
"She's gone to Barney's," he announced, rolling great eyes over his shoulder at his father; and the old man also went over to the window and watched Deborah plodding through the snow up the street.
It was not snowing so hard now, and the clouds were breaking, but a bitter wind was blowing from the northwest.