fied."

"What's that he's saying!" whispered little Mrs. Reed-Warbler, and
looked at her husband in dismay.

"Be quiet," he said. "Let us hear more."

The spider went into her parlour, hung seven eggs from the ceiling,
swallowed a mouthful of air and came out again.

"You're really a terrible robber," she said. "If it wasn't that I had
come to lodge with you, I should be furious with you. Why, you take the
bread out of my mouth!"

"Nonsense!" said the bladder-wort. "Surely there's plenty for the two
of us! I am quite pleased to have a lodger who drives the same trade as
myself. It gives one something to talk about."

"It's really odd that a flower like yourself should have turned robber,"
said the spider. "It's not in your nature, generally speaking."

"What am I to say?" replied the flower. "These are hard times. There are
a great many of us, and the earth is quite exhausted. So I hit upon this
and it goes swimmingly. But then I have got my apparatus just right.
Would you like to see it?"

[Illustration]

"Very much," said the spider. "But you won't hurt me, will you?"

"Be easy," said the bladder-wort, with a laugh. "You're too big for me.
Run along one of my stalks and I'll explain the whole thing to you."

The spider crept cautiously for some way down the branch and then
stopped and looked at a little bladder there.

"That's tight," said the bladder-wort. "That is one of my traps. I
catch my prey in them. I have a couple of hundred of them."

"So you can eat two hundred water-mites at a time?" said the spider,
enviously.

"I can. If they come. But I'm never so jolly lucky as all that. Now just
look: beside the bladder you will see a little flap, which is quite
loose. When some fool or other knocks up against it, it goes in
and--slap, dash!--the fool tumbles into the bladder. He can't get out;
and then I eat him at my leisure."

"Do you hear?" whispered Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Yes," said the reed-warbler, with a very serious face.

The spider could not resist fumbling at the flap with one of her legs:

"Ow!" she yelled suddenly.

She darted back with a jerk and the leg remained caught in the bladder.
It was drawn inside in a twinkling and the flap closed and the leg was
gone.

"Give me back my leg, please," said the spider, angrily.

"Have I your leg?" asked the bladder-wort. "Well then, you must have
touched the flap. What did you do that for, dear friend? I made a point
of warning you!"

"