“You must do all you can for your mother,” echoed in clear, silver accents in her memory; “Louis will gather them if I do not,” continued she, “and she will never know how much I love her. All little children pick strawberries for themselves, and I never heard of one being bitten by a snake. If I pick them for my mother instead of myself, I don’t believe God will let them hurt me.”
While thus meditating, she had reached the fence, and stepping on the lower rails, she peeped over into the deep, green patch. As the wind waved the grass to and fro, she caught glimpses of the reddening berries, and her cheeks glowed with excitement. They were so thick, and looked so rich and delicious! She would keep very near the fence, and if a snake should crawl near her, she could get upon the topmost rails, and it could not reach her there. One jump, and the struggle was over. She plunged in a sea of verdure, while the strawberries glowed like coral beneath. They hung in large, thick clusters, touching each other, so that it would be an easy thing to fill her bucket before the sun went down. She would not pick the whole clusters, because some were green still, and she had heard her mother say, that it was a waste of God’s bounty, and a robbery of those who came afterwards, to pluck and destroy unripe fruit. Several times she started, thinking she heard a rustling in the leaves, but it was only the wind whispering to them as it passed. She stained her cheeks and the palms of her hands with the crimson juice, thinking it would make her mother smile, resolving to look at herself in the water as she returned.
Her bucket, which was standing quietly on the ground, was almost full; she was stooping down, with her sun-bonnet pushed back from her glowing face, to secure the largest and best berries which she had yet seen, when she did hear a rustling in the grass very near, and looking round, there was a large, long snake, winding slowly, carefully towards the bucket, with little gleaming eyes, that looked like burning glass set in emerald. It seemed to glow with all the colors of the rainbow, so radiant it was in yellow, green and gold, striped with the blackest jet. For one moment, Helen stood stupefied with terror, fascinated by the terrible beauty of the object on which she was gazing. Then giving a loud, shrill shriek, she bounded to the fence, climbed over it, and jumped to the ground with a momentum so violent that she fell and rolled several paces on the earth. Something cold twined round her feet and ankles. With a gasp of despair, Helen gave herself up for lost, assured she was in the coils of the snake, and that its venom was penetrating through her whole frame.
“I shall die,” thought she, “and mother will never know how I came here alone to gather strawberries, that she might eat and be well.”
As she felt no sting, no pain, and the snake lay perfectly still, she ventured to steal a glance at her feet, and saw that it was a piece of a vine that she had caught in her flight, and which her fears had converted into the embrace of an adder. Springing up with the velocity of lightning, she darted along, regardless of the beauty of the stream, in whose limpid waters she had thought to behold her crimson-stained cheeks. She ran on, panting, glowing—the perspiration, hot as drops of molten lead, streaming down her face, looking furtively back, every now and then, to see if that gorgeous creature, with glittering coils and burning eyes were not gliding at her heels. At length, blinded and dizzy from the speed with which she had run, she fell against an opposing body just at the entrance of the lane.
“Why, Helen, what is the matter?” exclaimed a well-known voice, and she knew she was safe. It was the young doctor, who loved to walk on the banks of that beautiful stream, when the shadows of the tall hickories lengthened on the grass.
Helen was too breathless to speak, but he knew, by her clinging hold, that she sought protection from some real or imaginary danger. While he pitied her evident fright, he could not help smiling at her grotesque appearance. The perspiration, dripping from her forehead, had made channels through the crimson dye on her cheeks, and her chin, which had been buried in the ground when she fell, was all covered with mud. Her frock was soiled and torn, her bonnet twisted so that the strings hung dangling over her shoulder. A more forlorn, wild-looking little figure, can scarcely be imagined, and it is not strange that the young doctor found it difficult to suppress a laugh.
“And so you left your strawberries behind,” said he, after hearing the history of her fright and flight. “It seems to me I would not have treated the snake so daintily. Suppose we go back and cheat him of his nice supper, after all.”
“Oh! no—no—no,” exclaimed Helen, emphatically. “I wouldn’t go for all the strawberries in the whole world.”
“Not when they would do your sick mother good?” said he, gravely.