CHAPTER XXVII 



THE next day the little chickens were all 

 hatched and doing well. The hen had led them 

 to the courtyard, and, scratching the soil and cluck- 

 ing, she dug up small seeds which the little ones 

 came and took from their mother's beak. At the 

 slightest approach of danger, the hen called the 

 brood, and all ran to snuggle under her outspread 

 wings. The boldest soon put their heads out, their 

 pretty little yellow heads framed in their mother's 

 black feathers. The alarm over, the hen began 

 clucking and scratching again, and the little ones 

 went trotting around her once more. Completely 

 reassured, Mother Ambroisine forever renounced 

 her proverb of the spider. In the evening Uncle 

 Paul continued the story of the epeira. 



' ' Since it must serve as a support to the silken 

 network, the first thread stretched from one bank to 

 the other must be of exceptional firmness. The 

 epeira begins, therefore, by fixing both ends well; 

 then, going and coming on the thread from one ex- 

 tremity to the other, always spinning, it doubles and 

 trebles the strands and sticks them together in a 

 common cable. A second similar cable is necessary, 

 placed beneath the first in an almost parallel direc- 

 tion. It is between the two that the web must be 

 spun. 



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