It doesn’t seem to matter very much even to grown-up spiders to go without their dinners for several days. And when they do at last get some food they gorge. They eat and eat and eat, and instead of making themselves ill like you would do, they seem to feel very comfortable and are able to go hungry again for some time. Perhaps it is because, as babies, they got used to doing without food.
Spiders love fine weather.
Spiders love fine weather, and they seem to know when to expect the sun to shine. When it is a bright day Mother Spider brings out her big little family. It is no good offering them any food, for they can’t eat it yet, so she finds a sheltered hot place and gives them a thorough sun bath, which they like better than anything else.
And now one more little story before we say “Good-by” to spiders. When Emma was a tiny baby she had thirty-nine brothers and sisters. And as she was just a tiny bit smaller than the others, she was very badly treated. The stronger ones would be very rough and cruel to her. They used to walk over her and push her near the edge where she would be likely to fall off. Two or three times they had crowded her so that she really had slipped off and lay sprawling on the ground. However, she was very nimble and agile, and she had always been able to pick herself up quickly and clamber up one of her mother’s legs on to her back again.
One day the little spiders were more spiteful than usual. “You are a disgrace to us,” they told Emma, “you might be a silly ant.”