"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.