"It don't matter," said Plunkett easily. "She's best at home; and we'll find her all right there by-and-by. Shouldn't wonder if she isn't well, and that makes folks cross, you know. Anyway, I don't mean to have you two disappointed. I promised you should see it all, and you shall."
"But if I ought to go after Mother?" said Marigold.
"She'll be a deal better, left alone for a while. Come—here's the way to the snakes."
"You can't go now. Mother would be home before you could get there; and father don't like us wandering about the streets alone so late," said Narcissus.
"No, that I don't," promptly added Plunkett. "It's a bad way girls get into, and I don't mean my girls to get into it. And Mrs. Heavitree don't allow it neither."
Marigold felt the matter to be settled for her, and settled as she wished; yet the thought of Mrs. Plunkett weighed upon her enjoyment like a wet blanket. Narcissus wont into raptures of admiration and disgust over the snakes; and Marigold looked on soberly, only half disposed to smile.
"That sort's a boa constrictor, Narcissus. He'd squash you to a jelly, if he got a chance, and swallow you whole," said Plunkett, who liked to air such knowledge as he had, and who, in so doing, was rather apt to outrun his knowledge.
"Would it really? But, father, I shouldn't think he was big enough! Not nearly!"
"Can't judge, looking at him so. Them boa constrictors can swallow pretty near anything. Make nothing of a man or two for a mouthful. And here's another sort—a small follow—and that's the kind that kills by stinging. You just see his forked tongue. If it wasn't for the glass, he'd stick his tongue into you, in a moment, and you'd be dead of the poison in an hour."
Plunkett suddenly found the General to be looking at the same object—not only looking, but listening, with an amused curl of his military moustache,—and the confident tone was lowered.