Nan, too, saw something round and black moving near the place where Flossie had been sitting, and, fearing for the safety of her sister, the older Bobbsey girl lifted Flossie in her arms.

But no snake glided across the brown pine needles, and there was no hissing sound nor any forked tongue playing rapidly in and out, as Nan had once seen in a little snake Bert and Charlie Mason had caught.

“I don’t believe there is a snake,” Nan said, as Flossie slipped to the ground.  “If there was one it has gone away.”

“I’ll hit him with a stone!” cried Freddie, turning to look for a rock.  And as he moved Flossie cried again: 

“There it is!  I saw it move!  That black thing!”

This time she pointed so carefully that Nan, letting her eye follow along Flossie’s finger, saw what the little girl meant.  And Nan laughed.

“Why, that isn’t a snake!” she cried.  “It’s only a crooked, black tree branch!  It does look a little like a snake, but it isn’t really one, Flossie.”

“But what made it move?” the little girl asked.

“I think it was Freddie, though he didn’t do it on purpose,” went on Nan.  “Take another step, Freddie, as you did when you were looking for a stone.”

Freddie moved a little and then they all saw what it was that had caused Flossie’s fright.  A long, dead branch of a tree lay on the ground.  The larger end of it was close to where Flossie had been sitting with Nan, and this end did look somewhat like a snake, with a mouth and eyes.  The middle of the stick was covered with pine needles, and the lower end stuck out beyond the needles and dried leaves close to where Freddie stood.

When the little boy took a step his foot touched the thin end of the branch, and made the thick end, near Flossie, move.  Flossie took this for the swaying of a snake’s head, and so she had screamed in fright.

“There’s your snake—­only a tree branch!” laughed Nan, as she lifted the dead limb and held it up.

“Ho!  Ho!” laughed Freddie.

“Was that it—­for sure?” asked Flossie.

“Of course!” answered Nan.  “Come sit down and finish your sandwich.  Then we’ll play until it’s time to eat our regular lunch.”

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t a real snake,” sighed Flossie, as she took her place with her sister beneath the tree.

“If it had been a real snake I’d ‘a’ pegged a rock at it!” boasted Freddie.

This was not the only fright at the picnic, for a little girl about Flossie’s age cried when she saw a big frog in a pool, and a little boy ran screaming to his mother because a grasshopper perched on his shoulder.

But things like these always happen at picnics, and when the little frights were over even the children themselves laughed at their short-lived terror.

After the ball game Bert and Nan took the smaller Bobbsey twins for a row in a boat.  Everything went well except that Freddie, in trying to sail his tiny ship over the side of the rowboat, nearly fell in himself.  But Bert caught him just in time and pulled him back.