But now what I do hold against time is this: Time be so all-fired slick. It’s slick as a otter slide. And how come me to object to that, don’t be on account of you slip down it so fast, but you slip down without noticing what time’s a-doing to you. That’s what I object to. If time’s fixing to change you, why, it can’t be holpen. But the road’s greasy as a darky’s cook pot, and what does a feller do? He goes kiyoodling along it, and him changing, like a man getting drunk and not knowing it. And here comes a turn in the road, or a ditch you ain’t looking for. And what do you do? You think you got all your senses, and you ain’t, and you do the wrong thing and maybe knock your brains out. And if you only had some sign, something to tell you you was drunk instead of sober, something to tell you you was changed, why, you might make it.

Now that happened to me with my Will. I come so clost to losing the only man a woman like me could ever hope to get a-holt of, and a good man to boot, that I can still feel the danger whistling past me like a rattlesnake striking and just missing. And that’s it. Time ain’t got the decency of a rattlesnake. A rattler most times’ll give warning. I almost lost my Will, and me a big fat somebody no man’d look at twicet lessen he was used to me. I almost lost him on account of I had changed and didn’t know it, and time never give me the first sign to warn me. Merciful jay bird! No, sir, time’s a low-down, sneaking, cottonmouth moccasin, drops its fangs without you knowing it’s even in the grass, and was there ary thing I could do about it, I’d do it. Excusing that, I got nothing against time.