with her little blue eyes; the kind house-dog saw it with his steady brown
eyes; the yellow canary saw it with his wise, bright eyes. Even the wee,
wee mice that were so afraid of the cat had peeped one peep when no one
was by.

But there was someone who hadn't seen the Christmas tree. It was the
little grey spider!

You see, the spiders lived in the corners,--the warm corners of the sunny
attic and the dark corners of the nice cellar. And they were expecting to
see the Christmas Tree as much as anybody. But just before Christmas a
great cleaning-up began in the house. The house-mother came sweeping and
dusting and wiping and scrubbing, to make everything grand and clean for
the Christ-child's birthday. Her broom went into all the corners, poke,
poke,--and of course the spiders had to run. Dear, dear, _how_ the spiders
had to run! Not one could stay in the house while the Christmas cleanness
lasted. So, you see, they couldn't see the Christmas Tree.

Spiders like to know all about everything, and see all there is to see,
and these were very sad. So at last they went to the Christ-child and told
him about it.

"All the others see the Christmas Tree, dear Christ-child," they said;
"but we, who are so domestic and so fond of beautiful things, we are
_cleaned up_! We cannot see it, at all."

The Christ-child was sorry for the little spiders when he heard this, and
he said they should see the Christmas Tree.

The day before Christmas, when nobody was noticing, he let them all go in,
to look as long as ever they liked.

They came creepy, creepy, down the attic stairs, creepy, creepy, up the
cellar stairs, creepy, creepy, along the halls,--and into the beautiful
room. The fat mother spiders and the old papa spiders were there, and all
the little teeny, tiny, curly spiders, the baby ones. And then they
looked! Round and round the tree they crawled, and looked and looked and
looked. Oh, what a good time they had! They thought it was perfectly
beautiful. And when they had looked at everything they could see from the
floor, they started up the tree to see more. All over the tree they ran,
creepy, crawly, looking at every single thing. Up and down, in and out,
over every branch and twig, the little spiders ran, and saw every one of
the pretty things right up close.

They stayed till they had seen all there was to see, you may be sure, and
then they went away at last, _quite_ happy.

Then, in the still, dark night before