“How so?” queried Amy.

“Why,” said Mollie, “she’s already lost her boy and now we’re about to lose ours.”

“Goodness, Mollie,” cried Grace indignantly, while the others chuckled, “you make me feel eighty years old.  They’re not our sons, you know.”

“Of course you had to tell me that—­” Mollie was beginning, when a scream from Amy and a hurried scramble onto a convenient stump interrupted her.

“What is it?” they cried, running to her anxiously.

“Look out, look out,” Amy cried, bringing them up with a sharp turn a couple of feet from her perch.

“What is it?” they cried again, looking wildly about them.

“A snake,” she screamed.  “Look out, Grace, it’s coming for you!  Oh, look out!”

Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the girls looked where Amy pointed, and saw, wriggling ominously toward them through the short grass, a large coppery-headed snake.

Grace gave one desperate leap and landed beside Amy on the stump while Betty and Mollie stepped to one side out of the reptile’s path.  Then, almost miraculously—­or so Betty thought when she looked back upon it afterward—­her eye fell upon a forked twig lying at her feet.

Quick as light she stooped and picked it up, then turned to Mollie, who was standing backed up against a tree, white-faced, terrified, in a half-hypnotized condition, staring at the snake.

The reptile had coiled itself and lay hissing at them viciously.

“I’m going to hold out this stick,” whispered Betty feverishly between lips that scarcely moved, “and when he strikes, pick up that rock at your feet and let him have it.  Ready?”

“Y-yes,” stammered poor Mollie, terrified, yet game to the last.  “Oh, Betty—­”

But the sentence was never finished for, with a menacing movement, Betty had thrust the stick toward the reptile and the latter with a hiss had struck.

Quick as a flash and before the snake had time to coil again, Mollie picked up the rock and hurled it at his sinister copper head.  Her aim was true, and the long, slithery body, robbed of its deadliness, writhed and beat furiously at the short stubbly grass.

Mollie put her hands before her eyes, shivering, and even Betty leaned weakly against a tree, faint and sick, now that the crisis had passed.

“I—­I thought you’d be k-killed,” moaned Amy, and though the tears of excitement and horror were rolling down her cheeks, she would have been the first to deny it had you told her she was crying.  “Oh, B-Betty, you’re w-wonderful!”

“No I’m not—­I’m just scared stiff,” cried Betty hysterically.  “Anyway, M-Mollie did it all.”

“Well, let’s g-get out of here,” cried Grace.  Later they had time to laugh at the chattering teeth that made it impossible to say anything without stammering—­but it seemed anything but funny to them then.  “Let’s g-get out!”

“Second the motion,” cried Betty, with a wry little twist to her mouth, being, as usual, the first to recover her self control.  “I can’t see any sense in lingering.”