The messengers in their haste quite overlooked me.

It was their fault if they took a short cut unknown to me.

I was all the time faithfully steering by the sign of the tobacco shop, and the shop with the jumping-jack in the window, and the garden with the iron fence, and the sentry box opposite a drug store, and all the rest of my landmarks, as carefully entered on my mental chart the day before.
All this I told my scared relatives as soon as they let me, till they were convinced that I was not lost, nor stolen by the gypsies, nor otherwise done away with.

Cousin Rachel was so glad that she would not have to return to Polotzk empty-handed that she would not let anybody scold me.

She made me tell over and over what I had seen on the way, till they all laughed and praised my acuteness for seeing so much more than they had supposed there was to see.