“But, as I was remarkin’, that day while the picnic was breakin’ up, we all got talkin’ about a ball that was comin’ off the followin’ week down at Crow Bend. Abe wanted Kate to go down thar with him, but she had partly agreed afore that to go long er me; so to git herself out of it and me in, she said she would go with the one who could take her the fastest.
“‘That’s me,’ said Abe, straightenin’ up kind of proudly, and givin’ his pantaloons a hitch up at the waistband. ‘I can let you count the panels along the turnpike a leetle the quickest of any person around these quarters,’ and he looked sideways at me to see how I took the assertion.
“‘It’s not allers the hen that does the most extensive advertizin’ that makes the largest deposits,’ said Tom Ruggles, laughin’, as he sat thar packin’ away his dishes.
“‘No, Tom,’ said Gus Parks, the millinery man, who didn’t like Abe any too well, because he sort o’ smashed an engagement between him and the schoolmarm; ‘and it’s not allers your longest-tailed quadrupeds that git over the ground the fastest, nuther.’
“‘Wal, never mind, boys,’ ses I, jest easy, that way, ‘the proof of the whiskey is in the headache arterwards. I reckon I kin kill as many grasshoppers between here and Grab Corners as any person that cracks a whip in these parts.’
“‘What! with them thick-skinned critters of yourn?’ said Abe, p’intin’ his fingers at my hosses, and laughin’ as though it was mi’ty funny. It made me feel pooty riley, but I kept my temper.
“‘Supposin’ they hev thick skins,’ I ses, ‘they’re somethin’ like the cheese that goggle-eyed Peter bought from the peddler, their peculiarity doesn’t lie in the thickness of their hide so much as in the mysterious way they have of movin’ themselves around.’
“‘S’pose you try a race back to the Corner, then,’ ses one of the boys.
“‘Yes,’ ses Kate Rykert, clappin’ her hands and jumpin’ up. ‘I’ll ride back to the Corner with one of you, and let Tilley Evans go with the other, and I’ll go to the ball with the one who gets to the village first.’
“‘Agreed,’ ses Abe, ‘and you’ll ride back with me?’