eeped under a big rock.
It didn't bite once--and I didn't see any teeth to it."

"Carry your rod still, Dorman. Are you trying to knock my hat off my
head? Rattlesnakes have teeth, hon, whether you saw them or not. I saw a
great, long one that day we thought you were lost. Mr. Cameron killed it
with his rope. I'm sure it had teeth."

"Did it growl, Be'trice? Tell me how it went."

"Like this, hon." Beatrice parted her lips ever so little, and a
snake buzzed at Dorman's feet. He gave a yell of terror, and backed
ingloriously.

"You see, honey, if that had been really a snake, it would have bitten
you. Never mind, dear--it was only I."

Dorman was some time believing this astonishing statement. "How did you
growl by my feet, Be'trice? Show me again."

Beatrice, who had learned some things at school which were not included
in the curriculum, repeated the performance, while Dorman watched her
with eyes and mouth at their widest. Like some older members of his sex,
he was discovering new witcheries about his divinity every day.

"Well, Be'trice!" He gave a long gasp of ecstasy. "I don't see how can
you do it? Can't I do it, Be'trice?"

"I'm afraid not, honey--you'd have to learn. There was a queer French
girl at school, who could do the strangest things, Dorman--like fairy
tales, almost. And she taught me to throw my voice different places, and
mimic sounds, when we should have been at our lessons. Listen, hon.
This is how a little lamb cries, when he is lost.... And this is what a
hungry kittie says, when she is away up in a tree, and is afraid to come
down."

Dorman danced all around his divinity, and forgot about the fish--until
Beatrice found it in her heart to regret her rash revelation of hitherto
undreamed-of powers of entertainment.

"Not another sound, Dorman," she declared at length, with the firmness
of despair. "No, I will not be a lost lamb another once. No, nor a
hungry kittie, either--nor a snake, or anything. If you are not going to
fish, I shall go straight back to the house."

Dorman sighed heavily, and permitted his divinity to fasten a small
grasshopper to his hook.

"We'll go a bit farther, dear, down under those great trees. And you
must not speak a word, remember, or the fish will all run away."

When she had settled him in a likely place, and the rapt patience of the
born angler had folded him close, she disposed herself comfortably in
the thick grass, her back against a tree, and took