“Oh, she can’t get away yet!” said Polly. “You wait and see, Dicky. Just then, while she was hanging back from the rest of the company,—for they were all talking together, as they ran around and around, and saying how extremely wise she was, and what a pity it was that they had got to eat her up, after they had shown her all about,—she heard a little noise. You see, she was peering into a little cranny.”
“What’s a cranny?” asked Dick abruptly.
“Oh! a little hide-away place in the wall,” said Polly. “Well, she was peering in there, and wondering if she could slip in when the hundred ants weren’t looking, when she heard this little noise.”
“What was it?” asked Dick, getting as close to Polly as he could.
“You’ll see. And then as she peered in, she saw another brown bug, just like herself, only bigger, chained to the side of the wall, so she couldn’t get away.”
“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Dick; “how big was the chain?”
“Oh! it wasn’t big at all,” said Polly; “how could it be, to fasten up that wee brown bug? It was all made of the hairs of the black spiders dropped in the garden, where the ant house was; and the ants had twisted them together, and made chains to tie up their prisoners with.”
“Oh!” said Dicky, drawing a long breath. “And was she tied up tight?”
“Oh! just as tight,” said Polly; “the chain went all around her leg, and over her neck, and there she was sobbing away as if her heart would break.”
“What made her cry?” asked Dick. “Why didn’t she think up things, how to get away, just like your brown bug, Polly?” and he drew himself up with the determination to be like Brown Betty.