"Good day! Didn't expect you here. Pretty cold out, ain't it? Have a
chair."

Abbie did not realize how numb the cold had made her body until she
tried to sit down.

"Maggie, give her a cup of that hot tea," Owen Frazer continued. "She's
been almost froze, an' I guess she'll have a cup of tea. Hey! Miss
Snover?"

"I want to talk to Old Chris."

"Talk to Old Chris! Talk to Old Chris, you want to?"

Owen Frazer looked at his wife. Abbie Snover didn't know, yet she had
walked all the way to Mile Corners in the cold. He couldn't understand
it.

"What'd you come for, anyhow, Abbie Snover?"

"Now, Owen, you wait!" Owen Frazer's wife turned to Abbie:

"Got lonesome, did you, all by yourself in that big barn of a house?"

"I want to talk to Old Chris," Abbie repeated.

"Was you so fond of him, then?"

Abbie made no answer. Owen Frazer went over to the sink and looked out
of the window at the bed-tick smoldering on the rubbish heap. Owen
Frazer's wife pushed open the door of the sitting-room, then stood back
and turned to Abbie:

"You may be fine old family, Abbie Snover, but we're better. You turned
Old Chris out, an' now you want to talk to him. All right, talk to him
if you want to. He's in the parlor. Go on in now. Talk to him if you
want to--go on in!"

The animosity in Mrs. Frazer's voice shook Abbie; she was disturbed;
doubt came to her for the first time. As she went through the
sitting-room, fear slowed her steps. Perhaps they had turned Old Chris
away from her and she would have to go back alone, to live alone, for
all the remaining years of her life, in that big house.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS[6]

[Note 6: Copyright, 1917, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1918, by Irvin S. Cobb.]

BY IRVIN S. COBB

From _The Saturday Evening Post_

When Judge Priest, on this particular morning, came puffing into his
chambers at the courthouse, looking, with his broad beam and in his
costume of flappy, loose white ducks, a good deal like an old-fashioned
full-rigger with all sails set, his black shadow, Jeff Poindexter, had
already finished the job of putting the quarters to rights for the day.
The cedar water bucket had been properly replenished; the jagged flange
of a fifteen-cent chunk of ice protruded above the rim of the bucket;
and alongside, on the appointed nail, hung the gourd dipper that the
master always used. The floor had been swept, except, of course, in the
corners and underneat