“I—I—haven’t thought about it,” said Ruth, slowly, for the question had come very suddenly, “but I’d like you to go on telling me things. Do you always hang with your head down? I should think it would make you dizzy.” “Dizzy? Whoever heard of such a thing? Of course I keep my head down, and my toes on my telegraph lines. Then I can feel the least tremble in any one of them, and I’m pretty quick to run where I know my dinner is waiting. Sometimes I don’t hurry quite so fast. That is when the line trembles in a way which lets me know that something big has been caught. Indeed, there are times when I bite the threads around what might have been my dinner, and let it go; for it is wiser to lose a meal than run the chance of being a meal.” And Mrs. Orb Weaver winked, not with one eye only, but with all eight. “Now it is time to talk to the company,” she added, “as I am chair-spider.” She said the last words in a loud voice, intended for all to hear; then she looked around to see if any one objected. “They had better not,” she said to Ruth, and in a louder voice, added: “My friends, we are not appreciated. Men talk about the wonderful bees, the wonderful wasps, the wonderful ants, but few of them say anything about the wonderful spiders. Now we are wonderful, too, and we are honest, and we are industrious. We eat flies and lots of other pests, and we do not hurt orchards, or steal into pantries, or chew up clothes. Indeed, we do man no harm at all. But is he grateful? Tell me that. I’ll tell you he isn’t. Ask Mrs. Cobweb Weaver if there isn’t always some broom sweeping down the nice web she makes. I wonder she doesn’t hate a broom. No, my friends, man is not grateful. Even those who call themselves our friends are ready to pop us into bottles, or boxes, whenever they get a chance. They give us what they call a painless death in the cause of science. Now we would rather live in our own cause. At least I would.” Mrs. Orb Weaver had become so excited that her whole web was shaking violently. Ruth was excited, too. “It’s rather horrid to do that way,” she said, “but maybe people don’t know about you. I didn’t until to-day. The wonderful things I mean, and I want to know lots more. How your web is made and—and—everything. Please tell me.” “Why, certainly,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver readily. “To begin with, my web is made of silk.” “Who didn’t know that?” snapped a running spider. “I didn’t,” answered Ruth. “You! And who are you, pray?”