The swampy ground has never been sad since, for now it is always beautiful, and the children love it. Year after year they watch the little buds unfold; then they fill their hands and pinafores with the golden buttercups, and carry them home as treasures to be loved and prized above all other flowers. SPINNY SPIDER "Why don't you grow wings?" asked the Red Butterfly. "And whatever is the good of having all those legs? Eight! Why, I am sure six are enough for anybody. You are not at all handsome." Spinny Spider turned herself round and round, and looked her velvety body all over with her six eyes. "We seem to look at things from different standpoints," she said. "I have no fault to find with my shape. I don't admire wings at all, and I certainly need all my legs. But I have no time to argue. I have my web to make." She ran to the top of the hedge and found a nice space between several twigs. Then she sat still, and from a little spinneret on each side of her body she drew hundreds of fine threads of silk, so soft and gummy that they looked like honey. With the tiny combs she carried on each hind foot she combed the threads in the air till they dried and hardened; then she twisted them into a single silken rope. She worked hard, and soon had made enough of the rope to reach to the opposite twig, so she put a drop of gum on it and let it float in the air till it caught the twig and stuck there. "This is a good start," she said. Now she climbed a higher twig and made another rope, and dropped it across the first one at right angles. Then she made several more, fastening them all together in the middle and gumming them tightly to twigs at the ends, until at last the foundation of the web was made. It looked like the spokes of a wheel without the rim. She began to spin a finer rope. As she spun she moved slowly from spoke to spoke, drawing the new rope with her and gumming it firmly to each spoke. Round and round she went in ever-widening circles, till the web was complete. Then she stood for a moment to admire her finished work. And well she might admire, for a moonshine wheel in a fairy coach could not be more beautiful than this. The delicate white silk glistened and shone in the sunlight, and here and there on every circle were set tiny drops of gum that gleamed like golden balls. In the centre there was no gum, for that was to be Spinny's waiting place. She curled herself up to rest after her work and to wait for her tea. And her tea soon came. A gnat came flying past in a hurry, caught one of his wings in the web, and in a moment was struggling for his life. "The gum will hold him," thought Spinny to herself. "I need not move." The gum did hold him, and his struggles only tightened the web about him. In a few minutes he was dead; Spinny went over to him, and had him for tea. Then she rolled herself up again. Presently a big blue-bottle fly came noisily buzzing along, and blundered into the net.