The Story of the Spider and the Butterfly
On the garden wall a brown Spider was spinning her Web. Backwards and forwards she went, making hundreds of little threads at once, twisting them into white ropes, arranging them with her feet and the little hooks on her jaws, and gluing them together where they crossed.
The Butterfly stood on a Leaf and watched.
“Is that to put your eggs in?” she asked at last. “Or do you put them on a cabbage?”
“On a cabbage! No, indeed!” said the Spider, staring with all her eight eyes at once. “I make a soft nest of silken threads to put them in.”
“That would not do for my babies.” And the Butterfly nodded her head and looked very wise. “They would get their wings fast in the threads.”
“Their what?” gasped the Spider, standing suddenly still in the middle of her Web.
“Their wings,” repeated the innocent Butterfly. “I don’t think I dare let my children come to play with yours if you always hang Nets about.”
“But your children won’t have wings!” gasped the Spider again. “They won’t be baby Butterflies!”
The Butterfly laughed gaily.
“What a funny idea!” she said. “Your eggs hatch into baby Spiders, don’t they? and they don’t have wings. And the hen’s Eggs hatch into little baby Chickens, and they do have wings, like the hen. I saw them this morning running after her, with all their wings stretched out. I suppose they are not old enough to fly yet. When my babies can fly, I shall go back to the flower garden.”
She flew away, leaving the astonished Spider still sitting in the middle of her Web trying to understand it all.
“Well!” she exclaimed to herself at last. “That’s what comes of having no mother! I always did say that the family arrangements of the Butterflies are the most foolish I ever heard of.”
The Butterfly was very busy, gumming her eggs safely underneath a cabbage leaf. Each little jar hung by its narrow end, as close to the next as could be.
“What a funny old Spider!” she thought at last, when she had finished. “I wonder if she has finished that Web.”
“Have you found a cabbage to please you?” called the Spider.
“Well, I suppose it’s all right,” answered the Butterfly a little doubtfully. “I don’t seem to be able to think of a better place to put my eggs, and I suppose the flowers will grow on the cabbage very soon. My baby Butterflies will not be able to fly far at first to find honey.”
“You mean your creepy, crawly Caterpillars!”
“Don’t you mean Spiders?” asked the Butterfly, trying to be sarcastic.
“Nothing so sensible! If you want to see——”
“Hush! hush! Don’t quarrel!” said the Breeze, shaking the Spider’s Web and puffing at the Butterfly’s wings.
“She says that my babies will be creepy, crawly——”
“Come away! come away! Come and find some honey!” said the Breeze.
He shook the Leaf and the Butterfly fell off. Then the Breeze so hurried her across the garden that when they reached the flowers she was out of breath with laughing.
“I suppose that old Spider is jealous because her children will not be so pretty as my baby Butterflies” she said.