“Perhaps they are snakes!” shrieked Amy, jumping up from her seat.
“Don’t sound like those others did,” said Henrietta, who had kept on steadily eating, and now spoke between swallows. “Them black snakes was fighting before.”
“Maybe they have patched up a truce,” said Darry Drew. “I tell you it is a chicken.”
“It may be a crysomela bypunktater,” remarked Burd recklessly. “Does that fact keep me from having another sandwich, Amy?”
“It ought to,” said Amy, while Henrietta’s eyes opened so wide when she heard Burd’s make-believe Latin that she could scarcely bite her own sandwich.
“My!” Henrietta whispered to Jessie. “What lots of things they learn you at them colleges, don’t they?”
“There is more than one thing hopping down those stairs,” declared Chip. “I reckon it must be a whole flock of those ‘bypunktaters’ you mentioned, Alling.”
“I’m going to find out what it means,” declared Sally, who was of a defiant nature. She hopped up and made for the stairway door. “Somebody is trying to play a joke on us.”
“Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” urged Amy. “You don’t know, Sally. It might be snakes.”
“Snakes with claws on them?” scoffed Sally.