"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 had some excitement as well as fun," observed Mr. Bobbsey. "Excitement!" cried Bert. "Say, Daddy, you ought to have been there when the truck almost smashed through the bridge!" "Oh, did that happen?" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "No, but almost," Bert went on. "Well, it seems to me that everything 'almost' happened," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Flossie _almost_ saw a snake, Freddie _almost_ fell overboard and the truck _almost_ broke the bridge." "Oh, the bridge really _is_ broken," Nan said. And she told about that accident. Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey had come to the picnic grounds by another road, and so had not seen the bridge that sagged in the middle.