d be no more cookies, and Old Chris should be told never
to let them come into the yard again.

That evening, when the metallic hiccough of the well pump on the kitchen
porch told her that Old Chris was drawing up fresh water for the night,
Abbie went out into the kitchen to make sure that he placed one end of
the prop under the knob of the kitchen door and the other end against
the leg of the kitchen table.

"It'll freeze afore mornin'," said Old Chris.

"Yes," Abbie answered.

But she did not get up in the night to put an extra chunk of wood in the
stove of the down-stairs bedroom.

* * *

"Ab-bie Sno-ver, na--aa--ah! Ab-bie Sno-ver, na--aa--ah!"

Old Chris stopped shoveling snow to shake his fist at the yelling
children.

"Your Mas'll fix you, if you don't stop that screechin'!"

And they answered: "Ab-bie Sno-ver, an' old Chris! Ab-bie Sno-ver, an'
old Chris!"

Every day they yelled the two names as they passed the big house. They
yelled them on their way to and from school, and on their way to
Giddings's Hill to slide. The older boys took it up, and yelled it when
they saw Abbie and Old Chris on Main Street Saturday mornings. And
finally they rimed it into a couplet,

"Ab-bie Sno-ver, an' Old Chris--
We saw Chris an' Ab-bie kiss!"

It was too much. Abbie went to Hugh Perry's mother.

Mrs. Perry defended her young son. "He couldn't have done it," she told
Abbie. "He ain't that kind of a boy, and you can just tell that Old
Chris I said so. I guess it must be true, the way you're fussin'
round!"

Mrs. Perry slammed the door in Abbie's face. Then she whipped her young
son, and hated Abbie and Old Chris because they were responsible for it.

"That Abbie Snover came to my house," Mrs. Perry told Mrs. Rowles, "an'
said my Hugh had been a-couplin' her name with Old Chris's in a nasty
way. An' I told her--"

"The idea! the idea!" Mrs. Rowles interrupted.

"An' I told her it must be so, an' I guess it is," Mrs. Perry concluded.

Mrs. Rowles called upon Pastor Lucus's wife.

"Abbie Snover an' Old Chris was seen kissin'."

"It's scandalous," Mrs. Lucas told the pastor. "The town shouldn't put
up with it a minute longer. That's what comes of Abbie Snover not coming
to church since her Ma died."

On Saturday mornings when Abbie went down-town followed by Old Chris,
the women eyed her coldly, and the faces of the men took on quizzical,
humorous expressions. Abbie could not help but notice it; s