“Why? Do you usually have eight legs?”
“Permit me to explain. We spiders have eight legs. We need them all. Besides, eight is a more aristocratic number. One of my legs got lost. Too bad about it. However you manage, you make the best of it.”
“It must be dreadfully disagreeable to lose a leg,” Maya sympathized.
Hannibal propped his chin on his hand and arranged his legs to keep them from being easily counted.
“I’ll tell you how it happened. Of course, as usual when there’s mischief, a human being is mixed up in it. We spiders are careful and look what we’re doing, but human beings are careless, they grab you sometimes as though you were a piece of wood. Shall I tell you?”
“Oh, do please,” said Maya, settling herself comfortably. “It would be awfully interesting. You must certainly have gone through a good deal.”
“I should say so,” said Hannibal. “Now listen. We daddy-long-legs, you know, hunt by night. I was then living in a green garden-house. It was overgrown with ivy, and there were a number of broken window-panes, which made it very convenient for me to crawl in and out. The man came at dark. In one hand he carried his artificial sun, which he calls lamp, in the other hand a small bottle, under his arm some paper, and in his pocket another bottle. He put everything down on the table and began to think, because he wanted to write his thoughts on the paper.—You must certainly have come across paper in the woods or in the garden. The black on the paper is what man has excogitated—excogitated.”
“Marvelous!” cried Maya, all a-glow that she was to learn so much.
“For this purpose,” Hannibal continued, “man needs both bottles. He inserts a stick into the one and drinks out of the other. The more he drinks, the better it goes. Of course it is about us insects that he writes, everything he knows about us, and he writes strenuously, but the result is not much to boast of, because up to now man has found out very little in regard to insects. He is absolutely ignorant of our soul-life and hasn’t the least consideration for our feelings. You’ll see.”
“Don’t you think well of human beings?” asked Maya.