MRS. GRABEM AND FUZ-BUZ.
MRS. GRABEM was a hairy spider who knit cobwebs and caught flies and brought up a small household of nine young spiders.
When I first knew this happy family, and learned all the wonderful things they heard and did, their home was as pretty a place as a spider need want. Their web was spun to and fro across the crotch of an old apple tree, and when they looked down they could see the green grass, and when they looked up they could see the great jolly red apples which must have looked to those young spiders just as the stars look to our own young folks.
On one side of their web, Mrs. Grabem had knit with great labour a long dark cave all of cobweb, where the family slept at night, and where they lay trembling while the great winds blew and the tree rocked and bent.
One fine breezy morning in June, when the leaves above were clapping their palms for joy at growing, and when the birds were tossing little love songs to one another, the old lady sat mending her web which a great wasp had broken. Meanwhile, the young spiders chased each other along one thread and down another and shook the dew from the web as they played.
"Ah!" said the eldest of them, as he saw it sparkle in the sun, "these must be the diamonds we have heard about."
"No," said another, "they look to me blue, they are turquoises."
"Geese!" said a third, who was on a distant part of the web, "they are drops of gold, any one can see they are yellow."
At this they fell to abusing each other, when suddenly the old lady cried out, "Foolish children, if you change places you will see that each of you is right. You make me think of a tale which my grandmother used to tell me. It is a story which has come down in our family from your ancestor who gave Robert Bruce such very good advice without ever saying a word. You know that the king was looking at the spider when he was swinging a line, striving to fasten it. The spider having tried six times was about to stop, for before this spiders never tried more than six times. But when he looked up and saw the king he knew just what was needed to give him courage, and therefore it was that the spider made one more mighty effort, and so at last made fast the web.