When she passed them to Abel, who was feeding his favorite hound puppy, Moses, with bacon, he shook his head and drew back.
"Give them to mother, Blossom, she never eats a bite of breakfast," he said.

He was the only one of Sarah's sons who ever considered her, but she was apt to regard this as a sign of weakness and to resent it with contumely.
"I ain't hungry," she replied grimly, "an' I reckon I'd rather you'd say less about my comfort, Abel, and do mo'.

Buckwheat cakes don't come well from a son that flies into his mother's face on the matter of eternal damnation." Without replying, Abel helped himself to the cakes she had refused and reached for the jug of molasses.

Sarah was in one of her nagging moods, he knew, and she disturbed him but little.

The delight and the desire of first love was upon him, and he was thinking rapturously of the big pine that would go to the building of Molly's house.
Grandmother, who wanted syrup, began to cry softly because she must eat her tasteless mush.