“If you don’t believe me,” said the snake, “you must get some good book of natural history, and there you will find it mentioned that we grass-snakes are quite harmless. It is the great superiority which our family have always had over that of the adder. People may call him a ‘poisonous reptile,’ but they cannot speak of us in that way. If they were to, they would only show their ignorance.”
“But how am I to know which is one and which is the other?” asked Tommy Smith.
“You will not find that very difficult,” the grass-snake answered; “and if you will promise not to hurt me, I will come out from where I am and show you.”
Of course Tommy Smith promised (you see he was getting a much better boy to animals than he used to be), and directly he had, the snake came gliding out from under the bush, and lay on the ground just at his feet. “Now”, he said, “to begin with, I am a good deal longer than an adder. I should just like to see the adder that was three feet long, and I am an inch longer than that. No, indeed! Whenever you see such a fine, long snake as I am, you may be sure that it is a nice grass-snake, and not a nasty adder.”
“I won’t forget that,” said Tommy Smith. “But, I suppose, snakes grow like other animals. How should I be able to tell you from an adder if I were to meet you before you were three feet long?”
“Why, by my skin, to be sure!” said the grass-snake. “Look how beautifully it is marked, and what a fine greenish colour it is. I may well be proud of it, for a very great poet indeed has called it ‘enamelled,’ and says that it is fit for a fairy to wrap herself up in. Think of that! The adder’s is quite different, only a dull, dirty brown, which I might call ugly if I were ill-natured. But I am not, so I will only say that it is plain. I don’t think any fairy would like to wrap herself in his skin.”
“But are there fairies?” said Tommy Smith.
“There are, as long as you are a little boy,” said the grass-snake; “but as soon as you are grown up there will be none.”
“How funny!” said Tommy Smith. “But do you know, Mr. Grass-Snake, I should not like to wrap myself up in your skin, even if I could, because it is so hard and covered with scales. And besides, how could the fairies get into it without killing you first? I don’t suppose you can change it as the frog and the toad do.”