"Here!" she said in a louder voice. "Give me one of your feet, and I will pull you out."
"Ugh! how ugly he is," she continued to herself, as the Spider drew nearer and lifted up one of his feet. She knelt down on the brim, and stretching out her tiny hands seized the foot, and pulled him slowly up the side of the bowl.
"Now he'll eat me!" she thought, as he stood for a moment shaking himself on the edge.
But no, without a word he was gone, scuttling straight off to the barn as fast as he could run. Was it possible that he was afraid of her!
Miss Muffet looked round. Behind her on the ground lay the big thorn with which she had set out to kill the Spider.
"I wonder it I have been a coward to spare him after all," she said as she flew home. "Anyway, I shall know to-morrow morning. Perhaps this is the last fly I shall ever have, and when I wake up to-morrow I shall be just an ordinary little girl with no wings, and a serge frock and pigtails." And murmuring "Coward, coward, I shall be an ordinary little girl to-morrow!" she fell asleep.
But when she woke up to-morrow morning she found she was a fairy still—wings and all; and moreover she found spread over her the daintiest and most beautiful counterpane in the world, made of grey threads woven with silver and diamented with dewdrops all glistening and quivering in the morning sunlight. It was indeed a masterpiece!
"Look what a lovely spider's web there is under the gooseberry bush!" said the farmer's little girl, when she came to fetch the empty bowl of curds and whey that morning.