But as for Fuz-Buz the fly, he sat on a limb above and looked on. After a little, when it was dark or nearly so, out came Mrs. Grabem slowly, and crawling over her web went down into the crack to murder poor innocent Fuz-Buz. Presently she cried aloud,
"Oh! I'm dead!" which was true in a moment, for Sir Bee had run his long sword straight through her, and she had tumbled off the tree as dead as could be.
At the sound of her voice all the young spiders ran out, and in a moment they saw Sir Bee with his quick sword. In a twinkling he stabbed them one after another, until he came to the youngest. Then Fuz-Buz said,
"Halloa! my friend, let this one go, for he was the only one who did not desire to kill me."
"Sir!" cried the youngest spider, "I do not wish to live after you have killed my mother and all my brothers and sisters. Take that, sir!"
So saying he dealt the Bee such a crack that he was forced to stab him like the rest, and there at last was the end of all of them.
As for Fuz-Buz, he said "Well, it's one spider less, and so many flies more. Spiders are of no use and flies are."
Meanwhile Sir Bee wiped his sword and took up his bag of honey, feeling that he had done a clever day's work, while Fuz-Buz flew away to Spain, and never could be brought to tell anybody a story long or short up to the end of his happy life.
Transcriber's Note:
- Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Otherwise spelling variations were not changed.
- Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
- Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that references them. The List of Illustrations paginations were changed accordingly.