e
everywhere; and we must be satisfied as long as we can get on well
together. I am very much afraid that all this excitement will hurt the
children's voices and then they will disgrace us at the autumn concert.
Pull yourself together and control yourself!"

"It's easy for you to talk," she said. "And I know well enough what life
is worth. My innocent little sister was eaten by an adder and my mother
was caught by a hawk, just after she had taught us to fly. I myself had
to travel in hot haste to Italy, last autumn, if I didn't want to die of
hunger. Then you came; and I have already learnt that marriage is not an
unmixed blessing. After all, one would be glad of peace just after the
children are born. And then, of course, I think of what the children
will grow up like in this murderers' den. Children take after others.
And such examples as they see before them here! Really, it might end in
their eating their parents!"

"Yes, why not, if they taste good?" asked a ladylike voice on the
surface of the water.

Mrs. Reed-Warbler shrank back and hardly dared look down.

A little water-spider sat on the leaf of a water-lily and smoothed her
fine velvet dress.

"You're looking very hard at me, Mrs. Reed-Warbler, but you won't eat
me," she said. "I lie too heavy on the stomach. I am a bit poisonous ...
just poisonous enough, of course, and no more. Apart from that, I am
really the most inoffensive woman in the water."

"And you say that one ought to eat one's parents?" asked Mrs.
Reed-Warbler.

"Maybe that was a rather free way of talking to a bird," said the
spider. "What suits one doesn't necessarily suit another. I only know
that I ate my mother last year and a fine, fat, old lady she was."

"Sing to me, or I'll die!" screamed Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

Her husband sang. And, meanwhile, they looked down at the water-spider.

She plunged head foremost into the water. For a moment, she let her
abdomen float on the surface of the pond and distended her spinnerets
till they were full of air. Then the creature sank and shone like silver
as she glided down to the bottom.

"That's very, very pretty," said the reed-warbler.

"Be quiet," said his wife and stared till she nearly strained her neck.

Deep down in a bush, the spider had spun a bell, which she filled with
air. The bell was built of the finest yarn that she was able to supply
and fastened on every side with strong, fine threads, so that it could
not float away. An