"It's still in this room. I know it. If I get down it might run up my leg. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!"
She was pretty heavy for that stool, Jerry thought, expecting one of its legs to crack any minute. She's like Little Miss Muffett, afraid of spiders—only she climbed a stool instead of being frightened away. He glanced down at the broom on the floor where Mrs. Bullfinch had thrown it. A large hairy spider was just crawling out of the broomstraws.
Jerry had never moved more quickly. Three steps and he had brought his foot down hard. Jerry did not enjoy killing even a spider but this time it seemed necessary, though he carefully refrained from looking at the dead insect.
"Good boy!" said Mr. Bullfinch.
Mrs. Bullfinch, with a little help from her husband, got down from the stool. She thanked Jerry earnestly and effusively.
"I'll not forget this. Someday I hope to do something for you. You don't know how obliged to you I am. That spider might have killed me."
Jerry did not think that the spider had been the kind that would have a bite that killed. Being thought a hero was pleasant, however. "Think nothing of it," he said, looking more cocky than modest in spite of his words.
"Where you want the pianer?" shouted one of the movers, and Mrs. Bullfinch bustled off to the living room.
There did not seem to be any reason for Jerry to stay any longer. He had a feeling that Mr. Bullfinch, though still very polite, had things he wanted to see to. So Jerry murmured something about having to get home and Mr. Bullfinch told him again that he was indebted to him for killing the spider.
"I never knew anybody as afraid of spiders as Mrs. Bullfinch," he said. "Everybody has something he's afraid of, I guess. With Mrs. Bullfinch it's spiders."