She had tied a piece of thick flannel over her mouth and nose , and she carried Susan 's old tin chip pan , half full of burning coals . '' ` You watch me , ' she said boastfully . ` I 've never done this , but it 's kill or cure that child is dying anyway . ' `` She sprinkled a spoonful of sulphur over the coals ; and then she picked up Jims , turned him over , and held him face downward , right over those choking , blinding fumes . I do n't know why I did n't spring forward and snatch him away . Susan says it was because it was fore-ordained that I should n't , and I think she is right , because it did really seem that I was powerless to move . Susan herself seemed transfixed , watching Mary from the doorway . Jims writhed in those big , firm , capable hands of Mary -- oh yes , she is capable all right -- and choked and wheezed -- and choked and wheezed -- and I felt that he was being tortured to death -- and then all at once , after what seemed to me an hour , though it really was n't long , he coughed up the membrane that was killing him . Mary turned him over and laid him back on his bed . He was white as marble and the tears were pouring out of his brown eyes -- but that awful livid look was gone from his face and he could breathe quite easily . '' ` Was n't that some trick ? ' said Mary gaily . ' I had n't any idea how it would work , but I just took a chance . I 'll smoke his throat out again once or twice before morning , just to kill all the germs , but you 'll see he 'll be all right now . ' `` Jims went right to sleep -- real sleep , not coma , as I feared at first . Mary ` smoked him , ' as she called it , twice through the night , and at daylight his throat was perfectly clear and his temperature was almost normal . When I made sure of that I turned and looked at Mary Vance . She was sitting on the lounge laying down the law to Susan on some subject about which Susan must have known forty times as much as she did . But I did n't mind how much law she laid down or how much she bragged . She had a right to brag -- she had dared to do what I would never have dared , and had saved Jims from a horrible death .
It did n't matter any more that she had once chased me through the Glen with a codfish ; it did n't matter that she had smeared goose-grease all over my dream XXXXX romance the night of the lighthouse dance ; it did n't matter that she thought she knew more than anybody else and always rubbed it in -- I would never dislike Mary Vance again .
after as at because from in of on through to