The spider attended to her web and caught and ate more flies than ever. She did not speak a word and looked so fierce that no one dared speak a word to her. The gentleman-spiders took good care not to come near her. They met every evening and talked about it.

 

“Yes, but he got her all the same!” said the most romantic of them.

 

Then the others fell upon him and asked him if he thought that that was happiness, to be eaten by one’s wife on the morning after the wedding. And he didn’t know what to answer, for his romance wasn’t so very real, after all.

 

The mouse stole away dejectedly and went to her hole. She took the thing to heart as though it had happened in her own family. The goat’s-foot and the parsley hung their screens and felt sheepish and ashamed in the face of the twigs¹ on the stubs. And so great was their overthrow² that even the twigs thought it would be a shame to scoff³ at them.

 

But, one day, when there was a blazing sun and the spider had crawled as far as she could into the shade of the leaf, the parsley bent⁴ down to the mouse’s hole and whispered:

 

“Psst!... Mousie!...”

 

“What is it?” asked the mouse and came out.

 

“It’s only the goat’s-foot and I who have something to ask you,” said the parsley. “Tell me—you’re so clever—don’t you believe that it’s possible that the spider may become a different person when she begins to lay her eggs?”

 

“I believe nothing now,” said the mouse. “I shall never believe that that woman will ever lay eggs.”

 

But she did, for all that.

 

One fine morning, she began and behaved in such a way that no one in the hedge ever forgot the story:

 

“Ugh!” she said. “That one should be bothered with this nonsense with children now!”

 

She laid a heap of ten eggs and stood looking at them, angrily.

 

“Build a nest for your eggs,” said the parsley. “All that we have and possess is at your disposal.”

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