"Yes, why not, if they taste good?" asked a ladylike voice on the surface of the water.
Mrs. Reed-Warbler shrank back and hardly dared look down.
A little water-spider sat on the leaf of a water-lily and smoothed her fine velvet dress.
"You're looking very hard at me, Mrs. Reed-Warbler, but you won't eat me," she said. "I lie too heavy on the stomach. I am a bit poisonous ... just poisonous enough, of course, and no more. Apart from that, I am really the most inoffensive woman in the water."
"And you say that one ought to eat one's parents?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Maybe that was a rather free way of talking to a bird," said the spider. "What suits one doesn't necessarily suit another. I only know that I ate my mother last year and a fine, fat, old lady she was."
"Sing to me, or I'll die!" screamed Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
Her husband sang. And, meanwhile, they looked down at the water-spider.
She plunged head foremost into the water. For a moment, she let her abdomen float on the surface of the pond and distended her spinnerets till they were full of air. Then the creature sank and shone like silver as she glided down to the bottom.
"That's very, very pretty," said the reed-warbler.