Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/133

 cigarette, "and the world and all good people will condemn you."

"I fear," said I, with my cigarette, "that the world and all good people already do that."

"Ah, do they!" said my friend Annabel Lee. "Never mind—I will take care of you, you poor, miserable, little rat; I will make all soft for you; I will keep out the cold; I will color the dullness; I will fight off the mob."

"And I," I replied, "if for that reason you do so, will thank the world and all good people for condemning me."

"That was neatly said," said my friend Annabel Lee. "But let me tell you, when the world grows soft, I will grow hard—hard as nails."

"Then let the world stay hard," I said—"hard and bitter as wormwood, if it will, so that you come indeed thus friendly to me through these gray clouds."