Mary was peeping from beneath her lids at Art, and was at the same time watching everybody else to see that she was not observed.
Art was whistling to himself in a low tone, and he was looking fixedly at a spider.
The spider was hauling on a loose rope of his tent, and he was very leisurely. One would have thought that he was smoking also.
"What did you have for dinner?" said Art to the spider.
"Nothing, sir, but a little, thin, wisp of a young fly," said the spider.
He was a thick-set, heavy kind of spider, and he seemed to be middle-aged, and resigned to it.
"That is all I had myself," said Art. "Are the times bad with you now, or are they middling?"
"Not so bad, glory be to God! The flies do wander in through the holes, and when they come from the light outside to the darkness in here, sir, we catch them on the wall, and we crunch their bones."
"Do they like that?"
"They do not, sir, but we do. The lad with the stout, hairy legs, down there beside your elbow, caught a blue-bottle yesterday; there was eating on that fellow, I tell you, and he's not all eaten yet, but that spider is always lucky, barring the day he caught the wasp."