"You must be careful, Ann," her mother said. "Your word is out to John McNeil and he has a good start in life. Abe is a fine boy and honest as the day is long, but he hasn't got anything to take care of a woman on. Besides, he does all sorts of queer things. For all we know he may yet take to writing poetry. You must not give him any encouragement. Since that quilting-bee I've had some thoughts. He wasn't there to learn to quilt. He'd be fearful hard to get shut of if he got in love good and hard."
"He has no idea of love at all," Ann hastened to assure her mother. "He doesn't even know what it means. He told me so."
"That's the worst kind to get stirred up. The kind that just naturally knows how are always having attacks of love the same as they do attacks of measles. But the kind that has to be waked up and taught by some woman have terrible bad cases. Don't you get Abe Lincoln stirred up."
"He doesn't care for girls, anyway—no particular ones. He likes books and is not the kind to fall in love."
"Love can pipe through any kind of a reed," was Mrs. Rutledge's answer. "Don't stir Abe Lincoln up."
TOWN TOPICS
Nor many months had elapsed after Abraham Lincoln went into the "store business" before those interested began to feel that John McNeil had not been mistaken when he said Lincoln would not be a success as a business man.