But the latter was already a hundred yards off, where, half ashamed of her panic, half secure in the distance she had covered, she turned to see what would happen. Suddenly a sound of suppressed laughter reached Marian’s ears. It seemed to come from the pomegranate hedge. Simultaneously the snake came to an abrupt standstill, and lay motionless.
Any misgivings Marian may have felt vanished on the instant. She knew that laugh, and recognising it became alive to something which in her not unnatural alarm had escaped her before. The snake was as dead as a pickled herring, and there was a noose of thin twine round its neck.
“Chris! How can you?” she cried. “You have nearly frightened Violet to death!”
“Have I?” laughed Christopher Selwood, emerging from his hiding-place. “No, no! That won’t do. Why, wasn’t it Miss Avory who was sticking out the other day that no snake in this country could scare her? Ho, ho, ho!”
The speaker was a well-built, good-looking man of middle age, with a heavy brown beard, just beginning to show a streak of grey here and there, and keen, fun-loving eyes. His face was tanned and burnt, likewise his hands, which latter were rough and horny through much hard manual labour. He was dressed in cord trousers and a flannel shirt, and carried his jacket under his arm.
“Ho, ho, ho!” he roared again! picking up the dead snake by its late motive power—the twine to wit. “Where’s the young lady who isn’t afraid of snakes?”
“Really, Chris, what a great schoolboy you are!” said his sister. “If I were Violet, I should never forgive you. You had no business to frighten her like that!”
“No, you hadn’t,” said Violet, who now came up. “But I’ll forgive you, Mr Selwood, because—I’ll be even with you yet.”
“Hallo! That’s a rum sort of forgiveness. Well, Miss Avory, I won’t grumble; you shall work your wicked will, how, when, and where you please.”
“Ugh! What a hideous thing!” said Violet, contemplating the dead reptile with a shudder, “But—joking apart—they can’t be very plentiful, can they? Ever since I’ve been here I’ve only seen one, and it was dead.”