you may
be right. At any rate, it is not of much consequence. You had better go
up into the window, old toad." Now this was a sneer on the part of the
spider.

"But I can't climb up into the window," said the toad; "all I can do is
to crawl about the ground, but you can run up a wall quickly. How I do
wish I was a spider, like you. Oh, dear!" And then the toad turned
round, after bowing to the clever spider, and went back to his hole.

Now the spider was secretly very much mortified and angry with himself,
because he had not noticed this about the flies going to the window in
the summer-house. At first he said to himself that it was not true; but
he could not help looking that way now and then, and every time he
looked, there was the window crowded with flies. They had all the garden
to buzz about in, and all the fields, but instead of wandering under
the trees, and over the flowers, they preferred to go into the
summer-house and crawl over the glass of the little window, though it
was very dirty from so many feet. For a long time, the spider was too
proud to go there too; but one day such a splendid blue-bottle fly got
in the window and made such a tremendous buzzing, that he could not
resist it any more.

So he left his web by the railings, and climbed up the blue-painted
wall, over Bevis's writings and marks, and spun such a web in the window
as had never before been seen. It was the largest and the finest, and
the most beautifully-arranged web that had ever been made, and it caught
such a number of flies that the spider grew fatter every day. In a
week's time he was so big that he could no longer hide in the crack he
had chosen, he was quite a giant; and the toad came across the grass one
night and looked at him, but the spider was now so bloated he would not
recognise the toad.

But one morning a robin came to the iron railings, and perched on the
top, and put his head a little on one side, to show his black eye the
better. Then he flew inside the summer-house, alighted in the window,
and gobbled up the spider in an instant. The old toad shut his eye and
opened it again, and went on thinking, for that was just what he knew
would happen. Ever so many times in his very long life he had seen
spiders go up there, but no sooner had they got fat than a robin or a
wren came in and ate them. Some of the clever spider's web was there
still when Bevis looked out of the window, all dusty and draggled, with
the skins and