Page 165 - Adventures in shadow-land

*
she was gentler and kinder than I wag,— I could

not do it. Meantime, the Green Frog laughed
at my efforts lo cscape. Yet, do what she would

to me, I never called for you. She might hang
me up in the spider’s web,—she might threaten Lo
crush me,— I was silent.

“ At last I could stand it no longer, I must
help to carry heavy stones, and when their weight

nearly crushed me*— for though only shadows to
you, they were realities to me,—I would have

rested, the spider would sting me and scorch me
with his poisonous breath,—the jackdaw peck me,

— and the Green Frog would threaten to swallow
me, and tell me that now you never would come
to me, for the Dawn Fairies had made you forget

me. And not till then, when they told me you
had forgotten me, did I speak; and the only

words that I said were these, ‘ Eva! Eva I help
m e r M

“ Y es,'1 Eva said, “ those are the same words
that the brook brought me.T * And then she told

Aster about her dream : how the faces had asked
why he lost his flower; and the frog had spoken

of his coat j and the spider asked why he crept