dried leaves close to where Freddie
stood.

When the little boy took a step his foot touched the thin end of the
branch, and made the thick end, near Flossie, move. Flossie took this
for the swaying of a snake's head, and so she had screamed in fright.

"There's your snake--only a tree branch!" laughed Nan, as she lifted the
dead limb and held it up.

"Ho! Ho!" laughed Freddie.

"Was that it--for sure?" asked Flossie.

"Of course!" answered Nan. "Come sit down and finish your sandwich. Then
we'll play until it's time to eat our regular lunch."

"Well, I'm glad it wasn't a real snake," sighed Flossie, as she took her
place with her sister beneath the tree.

"If it had been a real snake I'd 'a' pegged a rock at it!" boasted
Freddie.

This was not the only fright at the picnic, for a little girl about
Flossie's age cried when she saw a big frog in a pool, and a little boy
ran screaming to his mother because a grasshopper perched on his
shoulder.

But things like these always happen at picnics, and when the little
frights were over even the children themselves laughed at their
short-lived terror.

After the ball game Bert and Nan took the smaller Bobbsey twins for a
row in a boat. Everything went well except that Freddie, in trying to
sail his tiny ship over the side of the rowboat, nearly fell in himself.
But Bert caught him just in time and pulled him back.

Then it was time for lunch, and what a good time all the children had,
sitting at tables in the little rustic houses, or on the ground, eating
from boxes and baskets. The Bobbsey twins, with a group of their
friends, sat in a little pavilion by themselves.

Besides the lunch which each child or group of children brought, there
was to be ice cream and cake, given by the Sunday school. The big
freezers had been arranged in a sort of shed, and the cake and cream
treat was to be given after the picnic lunches had been eaten. Just
before the time for this part of the program, Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey
arrived at the grounds, driving over in the auto, as they had promised
to do.

"Well, children, having fun?" asked the father of the Bobbsey twins.

"A dandy time!" exclaimed Bert. "My team won the ball game."

"And I 'most fell out of a boat!" boasted Freddie.

"Pooh! That's nothing! I 'most saw a snake!" exclaimed Flossie.

"A snake!" cried her mother.

"It wasn't real," Nan hastened to add, and Mrs. Bobbsey seemed to
breathe easier.

"Well, you have h