“Mercy, no!” shivered Tess. “Neale means it’s a rattlesnake.”
“Oh! I don’t like them,” declared Dot, immediately picking up the Alice-doll, of which she always first thought in time of peril.
“What shall we do?” demanded Ruth.
“Can’t he drive around it?” asked Mrs. Heard, rather excitedly. “I don’t believe at all in hurting any dumb animal—not even a snake or a spider.”
“How about breaking the whip on old Jonas?” whispered Neale to Agnes.
But his girl friend was all of a shiver. “Do get around it, Neale,” she begged.
“Can’t. The road’s too narrow,” declared the boy, with promptness. “And I am bound to run over the thing if it doesn’t move out of the way. I can’t help it.”
“Wait!” cried Mrs. Heard. “Get out and poke it with a stick.”
“Why, Mrs. Heard!” exclaimed Ruth, “do you realize that a rattlesnake is deadly poison? I wouldn’t let Neale do such a thing.”
“Besides being a suffragist,” declared Mrs. Heard, firmly, “I am a professing and acting member of the S.P.C.A. I cannot look on and see a harmless beast—it is not doing anything to us—wantonly killed or injured.”