“You have not done me any harm,” said Tommy Smith, “but that is because I have never seen you before now.”
“You may never have seen me,” said the adder, “but I have seen you very often. Sometimes I have been quite near to where you were walking, but when I have heard you coming, I have just crawled out of the way, and let you go by without hurting you. Now don’t you think that was very good of me? I should just like to know what you have to complain of.”
“You have never hurt me, I know,” said Tommy Smith. “But think how many people you do hurt.”
“Do you know anybody that I have hurt?” asked the adder.
“No,” answered Tommy Smith, “I don’t know anybody; but I am sure you must have hurt a great many people, because you are poisonous.”
“Well,” said the adder, “I think you might walk about a long while asking people before you found anyone that I had done any harm to. I never interfere with people unless they interfere with me, so I think the best thing they can do is just to let me alone. It is true that my two front teeth are poisonous, and that I can kill some creatures by biting them. But these creatures are not men or women, but only mice or small birds or frogs. You know I have to eat them, so I may just as well kill them before I begin. The grass-snake eats his frogs alive. That is much more cruel than if he killed them first, as I do.”
“How do you kill them?” said Tommy Smith. “I suppose you sting them with your forked tongue, and then they die.”
“Did you not hear me say that I bit them,” said the adder; “and that I had two poisonous teeth? My tongue is not poisonous at all. There is no more harm in it than there is in yours.”
“Oh! but, Mr. Adder,” cried Tommy Smith, “do you know I once went to the Zoological Gardens in London, and I saw the snakes there, and whenever one of them put out his tongue, as you do yours, the people all said, ‘Look at its sting! Look at its sting!’”
“That is only because they were ignorant people,” said the adder, “and did not know any better. No; it is the two long teeth in my upper jaw that are poisonous, and, if you will just kneel down, I will open my mouth so that you can see them, and then I can explain all about it to you.”