"Oh, Cephas! don't you be hard on the poor child; she felt as if she had got to go," she said, chokingly.
Cephas got up, went padding softly and cautiously in his stocking-feet across the floor to the sink, and took a long drink with loud gulps out of the gourd in the water-pail.
"I don't want to have no more talk about it; I've said my say," said he, with a hard breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Charlotte, with a little bundle under her arm, hastened down the hill.

When she reached Barney's house she went around and knocked at the side door.

As she went into the yard she could see dimly a white-capped woman's head in a south window of the Thayer house farther down the road, and she knew that Rebecca's nurse was watching her.

Rebecca's second baby was a week old, so she could do nothing for her brother.
Charlotte knocked softly and waited.

She heard a loud clamping step across the floor inside, and a whistle.