I don't know, but we hated the town boys, and they hated us.
Once or twice we had come into collision, though they always got the best of it.

One winter they snowballed us to such a pitch that as long as the snow was on the ground a lot of the little kids would no more venture to school alone than a sane man would step over the side of a balloon.
Another time they lined the street down both sides, and laughed and pointed at us as we walked to school.

That was far worse than snowballs, even with stones in them.

You should have seen us, with pale faces and hurried steps, making our way amid the jeers and gibes of our tormentors--some of the little ones blubbering, one or two of the bigger ones looking hardly comfortable, and a few of the biggest inwardly ruminating when and how it would best be possible to kill that Runnit the news-boy, or Hodge the cow-boy! These and many other torments and terrors we "Jenny Wrenites" had endured at the hands of our enemies the town boys, on the whole patiently.

In process of time they got tired of one sort of torment, and before their learned heads had had time to invent a new one, we had had time to muster up courage and tell one another we didn't care what they did.
Such a period had occurred just before my story opens.