"But — but spiders can't—"
"Of course not. Not real spiders, but I'm Arachne — I told you that."
A hazy memory stirred at the back of Lydia's mind.
"You mean the Arachne?" she inquired.
"Did you ever hear of another?" the voice asked, coldly.
"I mean, the one who annoyed Athene — though I can't remember just how?" said Lydia.
"Certainly. I was technically a spinster, and Athene was jealous and—"
"I should have thought it would be the other way — oh, I see, you mean you spun?"
"That's what I said. I was the best spinner and weaver, and when I won the all-Greece open competition and beat Athene she couldn't take it; she was so furiously jealous that she turned me into a spider. It's very unfair to let gods and goddesses go in for competitions at all, I always say. They're spitefully bad losers, and then they go telling lies about you to justify the bad-tempered things they do in revenge. You've probably heard it differently?" the voice added, on a slightly challenging note.
"No, I think it was pretty much like that," Lydia told her, tactfully. "You must have been a spider a very long time now," she added.