"Well, we're pretty much in the same boat as she is—or will be soon," mused Mollie, as the girls scattered to make good Betty's promise.
"How so?" queried Amy.
"Why," said Mollie, "she's already lost her boy and now we're about to lose ours."
"Goodness, Mollie," cried Grace indignantly, while the others chuckled, "you make me feel eighty years old. They're not our sons, you know."
"Of course you had to tell me that—" Mollie was beginning, when a scream from Amy and a hurried scramble onto a convenient stump interrupted her.
"What is it?" they cried, running to her anxiously.
"Look out, look out," Amy cried, bringing them up with a sharp turn a couple of feet from her perch.
"What is it?" they cried again, looking wildly about them.
"A snake," she screamed. "Look out, Grace, it's coming for you! Oh, look out!"
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the girls looked where Amy pointed, and saw, wriggling ominously toward them through the short grass, a large coppery-headed snake.