Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/78

 ing is relative. I tell you nothing is relative. I am come out of Japan. In Japan, when I was very new to everything, there was an ugly frog-eyed woman who washed me and anointed me and dressed me in silk, the while she pinched my little white arms cruelly, so that my little red mouth writhed with the pain. Also the frog-eyed woman looked into my suffering young eyes with her ugly frog-eyes so that my tiny young soul was prodded as with brad-nails. The frog-eyed woman did these things to hurt me—she hated me for being one of the very lovely creatures in Japan. She was a vile, ugly wretch.

"That was not relative. I tell you that was not relative," said Annabel Lee.

"If I had been an awkward, overgrown, bloodless animal and that frog-eyed woman had pinched my little white arms