Then, Stooping Quickly, She Took The
Creature Up In Her Hands, And Going Away To Some Distance From The
Others, Released It In The Long Green Grass, Green In Colour As Its
Glittering Skin And As Cool To The Touch.
Long ago as this happened it
is just as vivid to my mind as if it had happened yesterday.
I can see
her coming back to us through the orchard trees, her face shining with
joy because she had rescued the reptile from imminent death, her
return greeted with loud expressions of horror and amazement, which
she only answered with a little laugh and the question, "Why should
you kill it?" But why was she glad, so innocently glad as it seemed to
me, as if she had done some meritorious and no evil thing? My young
mind was troubled at the question, and there was no answer.
Nevertheless, I think that this incident bore fruit later, and taught
me to consider whether it might not be better to spare than to kill;
better not only for the animal spared, but for the soul.
And the woman who did this unusual thing and in doing it unknowingly
dropped a minute seed into a boy's mind, who was she? Perhaps it would
be as well to give a brief account of her, although I thought that I
had finished with the subject of our neighbours. She and her husband,
a man named Matthew Blake, were our second nearest English neighbours,
but they lived a good deal further than the Royds and were seldom
visited by us.
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