"Well — er — I — er — I don't think—" Lydia tried.
"It's not at all difficult to get in and out of Mrs. Ferris's house — not when you're my size," Arachne observed.
Lydia looked at the aquamarine. It wasn't possible to stop having a mental picture of the other stones that were lying bedded on black velvet in Mrs. Ferris's cabinet.
"Suppose one got caught?" she suggested.
"One need not bother about that — except as an inconvenience. I should have to take over in twenty-four hours again, in any case," Arachne told her.
"Well — I don't know—" said Lydia, unwillingly.
Arachne spoke in a ruminative manner:
"I remember thinking how easy it would be to carry them out one by one, and hide them in a convenient hole," she said.
Lydia was never able to recall in detail the succeeding stages of the conversation, only that at some point where she was still intending to be tentative and hypothetical Arachne must have thought she was more definite. Anyway, one moment she was still standing beside the bench, and the next, it seemed, she was on it, and the thing had happened.
She didn't really feel any different, either. Six eyes did not seem any more difficult to manage than two, though everything looked exceedingly large, and the opposite wall very far away. The eight legs seemed capable of managing themselves without getting tangled, too.