lly are, 'cause they're such
cowards they always run."

Katy considered. The task did not sound attractive, but Katy was plucky.
"I guess, if you can do it, I can."

Jane had not thought of asking Gertie and she was surprised to hear her
say: "I'm coming, too."

"Oh, Gertie, won't you be afraid?"

"Yes, I'm afraid, but I don't want the little piggies killed--just think
how you'd feel if you were lost in such a dreadful place and there were
snakes and awful things. If I see a snake I'll yell bloody murder, and I
guess it'll let me alone."

Jane threw herself on Gertie and hugged her. "Gertie Halford, I think
you'd make a real, sure enough book heroine, because you do things when
you think you ought to, whether you're scared or not."

"I wish Dick hadn't gone to town to-day," said Katy.

Chicken Little had her campaign already planned. "I'm going to get
Ernest's and Frank's and Sherm's rubber boots for us. They'll be lots
too big, but we can tie them around the legs to make them stick on. They
will be fine in the mud and water if we have to wade in the slough. Yes,
and they will protect us from the snakes, too. We won't put them on till
we get down there; they will be too hard to walk in. And we can take
Jilly's red wagon and put the smallest chicken coop on it. It isn't
heavy."

Mrs. Morton had gone to town with Dick and Alice for the day or the
girls would probably not have been permitted to carry out their unusual
undertaking. They quickly made their preparations with much joking about
the boots, and twenty minutes later came to the banks of the slough. The
slough was in reality a continuation of the spring stream, which spread
out in the meadows below the pond until it lost all semblance of a
stream and became merely a marshy stretch, whose waters finally found
their way into the creek. In the meadows adjoining, the finest hay on
the place was cut each year.

The girls sat down on the grass and fastened on the boots. The effect
was somewhat startling, for they reached well above the knee on Chicken
Little, who was the tallest of the three, while poor Gertie seemed to be
divided into two equal parts.

Both Katy and Jane giggled when she got laboriously to her feet.

"There's more boots than girl, Gertie," laughed Jane.

"You don't need to be afraid, Sis, you'll scare anything, even a snake!"
Katy remarked unfeelingly, though her words reassured Gertie
wonderfully.

"I don't feel so afraid in these," sh