Hard apples were strictly forbidden to Ephraim as articles of diet, and to eat many during the season required diplomacy.
The boy's jaws worked with furious zeal over the apple during his mother's temporary absences from the room on household tasks, and on her return were mumbling solemnly and innocently the precepts of the catechism, after a spasmodic swallowing.

His father was nodding in his chair and saw nothing, and had he seen would not have betrayed him.

After a little inefficient remonstrance on his own account, Caleb always subsided, and watched anxiously lest Deborah should discover the misdemeanor and descend upon Ephraim.
To-night, after the task was finished, Deborah sent Ephraim stumbling out of the room to bed, muttering remonstrances, his eyes as wild and restless as a cat's, his ears full of the nocturnal shouts of his play-fellows that came through the open windows.
"Mother, can't I go out an' play ball a little while ?" sounded in a long wail from the dusk outside the door.
"You go to bed," answered his mother.

Then the slamming of a door shook the house.
"If he wa'n't sick, I'd whip him," said Deborah, between tight lips; the spiritual whip which Ephraim held by right of his illness over her seemed to sing past her ears.

She shook Caleb with the force with which she might have shaken Ephraim.