that day was very quiet in the hedge and the next was no livelier.
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 twigs on the stubs. and so great was their overthrow that even the twigs thought it would be a shame to scoff 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 bent 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.”
“sit on them and hatch them,” said the goat’s-foot. “we will weave a roof over you, so the sun won’t inconvenience you in the least.”
“lay up some small flies for the children, for when they come out,” said the mouse. “you have no idea what those young ones can eat.”
“practise singing to them a bit,” said the twigs on the stubs.
“stuff!” said the spider.
she laid four more heaps. then she began to spin a fine, close covering of white threads to wrap each heap in separately.
“she’s not quite heartless,” said the mouse.
the spider took a heap, went down the hedge and buried it in the ground. then up again for the next heap and so on until all the five heaps were buried.
“there!” she said. “now that’s done with! and they won’t catch me at it again. now at least i am a free and independent woman once more.”
“a nice woman!” said the mouse. “a shame and a disgrace to her sex, that’s what she is!”
“such a dear little bird!” said the twigs on the stubs, sarcastically.
but the parsley and the goat’s-foot said nothing.
the next morning the spider was gone.
“the starling caught her,” said the mouse. “she was gone in a twinkling. i saw it myself.”
“if only she doesn’t make him ill,” said the twigs. “she must have been a bad mouthful.”
then autumn came and winter.
the mouse sat snug in her hole and the spider’s eggs lay snug in the ground. the goat’s-foot and the parsley withered and died. the twigs on the stubs lost their leaves, but rustled on through storm and frost and snow until next spring.
