"Toil and spin, toil and spin, year in, year out," said the Spider sadly. "It is my masterpiece that I am finishing to-night,—a woven counterpane, light as air, threaded with sparkling dewdrops. I was just going out to fetch a few more, and thought there might be some in this pond; but it is a sticky pond, and I fell in, and now I cannot get out again."
"Well, of all the idiots!" began Miss Muffet. "Of course you won't find dewdrops in there," she continued hastily. "But tell me some more about your work?"
So the Spider, still struggling in the curds and whey, told on. How he helped the gardener by eating up the flies; how day and night he toiled and spun, making and weaving carpets and counterpanes from silken threads that he himself spun out of nothing. "It was my masterpiece I was to finish to-night," he said again at the end.
All the while he was talking a great struggle was going on in Miss Muffet's mind.
She raised the thorn again.
"I came here to kill him. I shall be a coward and turn into a mortal if I don't kill him," she said to herself. "But if I kill him he will never finish his masterpiece. Supposing I don't kill him after all, but help him out, then he can finish his work and be happy." She looked at him again and shuddered.
"Oh, if I help him out he will eat me!" she cried. "I will be brave and kill him."
So she shouldered the thorn, and poised herself once more upon the edge of the bowl.
The Spider was still struggling, but more feebly, and Miss Muffet could hear him muttering to himself, "Grey, threaded with silver and sparkling dewdrops, oh, my masterpiece!"
"No!" she said, flinging the spear down on the tuft behind her. "I can't kill him. What does it matter if I turn into a mortal. I have never done any work or made a masterpiece. Let him eat me if he likes. I will save him!"