Deborah had a cooking-stove. She had a progressive spirit, and when stoves were first introduced had promptly done away with the brick oven, except on occasions when much baking-room was needed. After her new stove was set up in her back kitchen, she often alluded to Hannah Berry's conservative principles with scorn. Hannah's sister, Mrs. Barnard, had told her how a stove could be set up in the tavern any minute; but Hannah despised new notions. "Hannah won't have one, nohow," said Mrs. Barnard. "I dunno but I would, if Cephas could afford it, and wa'n't set against it. It seems to me it might save a sight of work." "Some folks are rooted so deep in old notions that they can't see their own ideas over them," declared Deborah. Often when she cooked in her new stove she inveighed against Hannah Berry's foolishness. "If Hannah Berry wants to heat up a whole brick oven and work the whole forenoon to bake a loaf of cake, she can," said she, as she put the pan of cake in the oven. "Now, you watch this, Rebecca Thayer, and don't you let it burn, and you get the potatoes ready for dinner." "Where are you going, mother?" asked Ephraim. "I'm just goin' to step out a little way." "Can't I go too?" "No; you set still. You ain't fit to walk this mornin'. You know what the doctor told you." "It won't hurt me any," whined Ephraim. There were times when the spirit of rebellion in him made illness and even his final demise flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they were so strenuously forbidden. "You set still," repeated his mother. She tied on her own green sun-bonnet, stiffened with pasteboard, and went with it rattling against her ears across the fields to the one where her son was ploughing. The grass was not wet, but she held her dress up high, showing her thick shoes and her blue yarn stockings, and took long strides. Barney was guiding the plough past her when she came up. "You stop a minute," she said, authoritatively. "I want to speak to you." "Whoa!" said Barney, and pulled up the horse. "Well, what is it?" he said, gruffly, with his eyes upon the plough. "You go this minute and set the men to work on your house again. You leave the horse here--I'll watch him--and go and tell Sam Plummer to come and get the other men." "G'lang!" said Barney, and the horse pulled the plough forward with a jerk.