"I have an admirable air of being more timid than she is!" he thought, annoyed.
They returned towards the shore along a low ridge. On their way he saw something cross this ridge about thirty feet ahead of them—a slender dark line. He ran forward and looked down (for the ridge was four feet high).
"Come quickly!" he called back to Ruth. "Your alligator was a base invention. But here is something real. He is hardly more than an infant," he continued, his eyes still fixed on the lower slope. "But he is of the blood royal, I can tell by the shape of his neck. I'll get a long branch, Mrs. Chase, and then, as you like adventures, you can see him strike." Where they stood, they were safe, for the snake (it was a young rattlesnake) would not come up the ascent; when he moved, he would glide the other way into the thicket. Hastily cutting a long wand from a bush, he gave it to her. "Touch him," he directed; "on the body, not on the head. Then you will see him coil!" He himself kept his eyes meanwhile on the snake; he did not look at her. But the wand did not descend. "Make haste," he urged, "or he will be off!"
The wand came down slowly, paused, and then touched the reptile, who instantly coiled himself, reared his flat head, and struck at it with his fangs exposed. Walter, excited and interested, waited to see him strike again. But there was no opportunity, for the wand itself was dropping. He turned. Ruth, her face covered with her hands, was shuddering convulsively.
"The snake has gone," he said, reassuringly; "he went off like a shot into the thicket, he is a quarter of a mile away by this time." For he was alarmed by the violence of the tremor that had taken possession of her.
In spite of her tremor, she began to run; she hurried like a wild creature along the ridge until she came to a broad open space of white sand, over which no dark object could approach unseen; here she sank down, sobbing aloud.
He was at his wits' end. Why should a girl, who apparently had no fear of bears or alligators, be frightened out of her senses by one small snake?
"Supposing she should faint—that Dolly is always fainting! What on earth could I do?" he thought.
Ruth, however, did not faint. But she sobbed and sobbed as if she could not stop.
"It's just like her laughing," thought Walter, in despair. "Dear Mrs. Chase," he said aloud, "I am distracted to see how I have made you suffer. These Florida snakes do very little harm, unless one happens to step on them unawares. I did not imagine, I did not dream, that the mere sight—But that makes no difference; I shall never forgive myself; never!"