158 NATURE IN A CITY YARD 



a fight. Sometimes a spider will eat her 

 own husband. That morning, too, a new- 

 comer, a child, had taken up her residence 

 in the same web, and was living on friendly 

 terms with its builder. It may have been 

 the cats, or the Monday wash, or Reginald 

 McGonigle, but twenty-four hours later 

 that web was gone. The elder cob had 

 set up a new establishment four or five 

 inches nearer to the fence, and the young 

 one had started her abattoir in another 

 part of the iris clump. A month later our 

 champion spider disappeared, and a leaner 

 one occupied her place. We had fed her 

 liberally with insects, and perhaps she had 

 burst. Before her heir followed this ex- 

 ample of disappearance mayhap from the 

 same cause, for she was a spoiled child 

 she had hung a papery bag of eggs, I 

 presume from one of the iris stalks. We 

 found these bags in the iris in the dead of 

 winter. 



City sounds grow dull; the perfume of 

 the lilies, most luscious of odors, comes on 

 a stir of air. There is a chirp of crickets 

 under the balsams. A heavy bell a couple 





