"Just so! Exactly what I thought--and then some. When I dragged what was
left of me home that night, and figured out where I'd been if the big
maple hadn't spread its branch just as wide as it did, or if the snake had
hit my leg 'stead of my britches--when I took my bearings and saw where I
was at, the thing that really hurt me worst was that if I'd gone, either
down or up, I hadn't done anything for Lily but give her a worse horror
than she had, of being 'got' by them Orphings' Home people, when I should
have made her _safe forever_. I took Peter to the barn and told him just
how it was, 'cause I felt mighty queer. I wasn't so sure that one scratch
on my leg that looked ugly mightn't a-been the snake striking through the
cloth and dosing me some, I was so sick and swelled up; it turned out to
be yellow jackets, but it might a-been snakes, and I was a little upset.
As man to man I asked him what I ought to do for my _family_ 'fore I took
any more _risks_. A-body would have thought the jolt the box gave me would
have been enough, but it wasn't! It took the snake and the quicksand to
just right real wake me up.
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