106 EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS. 



very teeth of that constituted domestic authority. So 

 successful was I, indeed, that when at last we flitted 

 southwards ourselves with the swallows on our annual 

 migration to the Mediterranean shores, we left Lucy 

 and Eliza — those were the names we had given them— 

 in undisturbed possession of their prescriptive rights iu 

 the drawing-room windows. This year they are gone, 

 and our home is left spiderless. 



They were curious and uninviting pets, I'm bound to 

 admit, those great juicy-looking creatures. Nobody could 

 say that any form of spider is precisely what our Italian 

 friends prettily describe in their liquid way as simpatico. 

 At times, indeed, the conduct of Lucy and Eliza was so 

 peculiarly horrible and blood-curdling in its atrocity, that 

 even I, their best friend, who had so often interceded for 

 their lives and saved them from the devastating duster 

 of the aggressive housemaid — even I myself, I say, more 

 than once debated in my own mind whether I was 

 justified in letting them go on any longer in their career 

 of crime unchecked, or whether I ought not rather 

 to rush out at once, avenging rag in hand, and sweep 

 them away at one fell swoop from the surface of a world 

 they disgraced with their unbridled wickedness. Eliza, 

 in particular, I'm constrained to allow, was a perfect 

 monster of vice — a sort of undeveloped arachnid Borgia, 

 quick to slay and relentless in pursuit : a mass of eight- 

 legged sins, stained with the colourless gore of ten 

 thousand struggling victims, and absolutely without a 

 single redeeming point in her hateful character. And 

 yet, whenever any more than usually horrible massacre 

 of some pretty and innocent fly almost moved me in my 



