Erica misunderstood his words, thinking that he was afraid for himself.

To the utter mystification of the room, she said, "Oh Paige, would you please close the door behind you when you go out?"

Ashen-faced, Paige decided that that was as good a time as any to excuse herself.

"No problem," she said weakly, and took her Leave

After making sure the door was closed, Erica abruptly dropped her snakes to the floor and trotted over to Matthew to comfort him.

"Don't be afraid, honey. I'll protect you!"

Startled, the snakes hissed in dismay and wriggled where they had fallen. Meanwhile, Fanya and her daughter forgot their dignity and scrambled atop the conference table.

Feeling a headache coming on, Matthew rubbed his eyebrows.

"I'm not—"

Before he could finish saying, “afraid," Erica had closed in.

"Oh,

Matthew, it's all right! I know you're a man, but there's nothing shameful in being afraid of snakes. Rest assured, there's no danger at all. In any case, I'm not scared, so I can protect you!" As she said this, she hugged him, patted his chest, adjusted his tie, and fussed over his lapels, thus leaving a copious amount of wet dirt smudged across the front of his suit.

Matthew looked down at her hands, his face hardening with disgust.

"Erica," he asked dryly, "did you think of washing your hands after handling those snakes?"

Her face was stricken with what appeared to be genuine shock.

“Oh! No!" she stammered, backing off a step.

Meanwhile, one of the two snakes she had dropped was creeping aimlessly about the meeting room. Its companion, apparently unsociable, had withdrawn to a corner and coiled itself up there.

As for the members of the Campbell family, they were huddled together atop the conference table, looking quite ridiculous and pitiable. The security guard they had brought was made of sterner stuff and remained as calm as Matthew. However, since there seemed to be no actual danger, he simply claimed his own corner of the room and waited at attention there.

After taking in the scene, Erica went to one of the snakes and gingerly gathered it up from the floor. She made a show of inspecting the creature; by contrast, the snake seemed uninterested in any of the humans present.

"It's so cute, isn't it?" asked Erica innocently.

"What are you all so afraid of?" She'd been careful to get ahold of snakes that were not poisonous. Naturally, nobody else in the room knew that.

With a casual air, she approached Phoebe, gently pointing the head of the complacent reptile toward her.

“How dare Phoebe tell on me to Matthew! Seems Like she hasn't Learned her lesson yet!' Erica thought. In recent days, Matthew had been sometimes warm and sometimes cold to her.

Erica had begun to fear, what if he dumped her because of the Campbell family? Her best chance of preventing that was to scare them all away!

And she seemed to be off to a good start; as Erica neared the desk,