Jeannette wanted to stop for ice cream.  She wanted them all to sit quietly together in a booth, but Donald rushed them to the car, and he drove them home in silence, his face growing grim.

“Did you have bad dreams about the snakes?” Jeannette asked Rodney the next morning at breakfast.  They were eating pancakes made with generic pancake mix.  Rodney slapped his fork in the pond of syrup on his pancakes.  “The black racer is the farmer’s friend,” he said soberly, repeating a fact learned from the snake man.