"With Dicky in the lead," she thought, "it's just as well to keep an eye on them."
As she approached the woods she saw the little army of rompered youngsters, each armed with a switch, and each doing his best to strike something high over his head. They all stood with their eager faces looking upward and their arms working busily with what muscle the summer had given them. Leaves were falling from the bushes and the lower branches of the saplings that were struck by their rods, and it was evident that they were causing great destruction to the foliage, whatever the real object of their attack.
Ethel's wonderment increased.
"Children do get the greatest amount of fun out of the smallest things," she thought. "What can they be doing?"
When quite near the thicket, however, her slow steps quickened into a run. Her sharp eyes discovered hanging from one of the trees over the heads of the children one of the large wasps' nests which seem to be made of gray paper. It had caught Dicky's attention and he had coveted it for purpose of investigation. Summoning his cohorts he had pointed it out to them and had urged them to bring it down. Each one had broken a stick; some had stripped off the leaves entirely; others had left a tuft at the end. In both cases the weapons looked dangerously destructive to Ethel, as she ran toward them and saw one pole after another swish past the home of the paper wasps and expected the colony to rush forth to defend their abode. With a cry of warning she bore down on them and with a sweep of her arms turned them all back into the open field. Dicky was indignant.
"What you doing that for?" he demanded angrily. "One more thwat and I'd a had it."
"You don't know what it is," cried Ethel breathlessly. "You'd all be stung if there were any wasps at home. That's their house and they get awfully mad."
The children looked back fearfully at the object of their attack.
"You've had a narrow escape," insisted Ethel, and then to divert their minds from what had happened she made them stretch themselves in a line and hunt for arrow heads all the way back to their mothers.
"Thith ith a funny thtone," exclaimed Dicky, picking up a rather large oblong stone that had a groove all around its middle.