She stayed in her bedroom most of the time, and her praying voice could be heard at intervals.
Some other women came in, and they went about with silent efficiency, performing their services to the dead and setting the house in order; but they said very little to Deborah.

When she came out of her room they eyed her with a certain grim furtiveness, and they never said a word to her about Ephraim.
It was already known all over the village that she had been whipping Ephraim when he died.

Poor old Caleb, when the neighbors had come flocking in, had kept repeating with childish sobs, "Mother hadn't ought to have whipped him! mother hadn't ought to have whipped him!" "Did Mrs.Thayer whip that boy ?" the doctor had questioned, sharply, before all the women, and Caleb had sobbed back, hoarsely, "She was jest a-whippin' of him; I told her she hadn't ought to." That had been enough.

"She whipped him," the women repeated to each other in shocked pantomime.

They all knew how corporal punishment had been tabooed for Ephraim.
The Thayer house was crowded the afternoon of the funeral.