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.