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EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS. 



the wasp would continue viciously to stick out his deadly 

 sting, which the spider would still avoid with hereditary 

 cunning. It was a horrid sight— a duel a ouirance between 

 two equally hateful and poisonous opponents ; a living 

 commentary on the appalling but o'er-true words of the 

 poet, that ' Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher 

 can heal.' Though these were the occasions when one 

 sometimes felt as if the cup of Eliza's iniquities was 

 really full, and one must pass sentence at last, without 

 respite or reprieve, upon that life-long murderess. 



One insect there was, however, before which even 

 Eliza herself, hardened wretch as she seemed, used to 

 cower and shiver ; and that was the great black bumble- 

 bee, the largest and most powerful of the British bee-kind. 

 When one of these dangerous monsters, a burly, buzzing 

 bourgeois, got entangled in her web, Eliza, shaking in 

 her shoes (I allow her those shoes by poetical licence) 

 would retire in high dudgeon to her inmost bower, and 

 there would sit and sulk, in visible bad temper, till the 

 clumsy big thing, after many futile efforts, had torn its 

 way by main force out of the coils that surrounded it. 

 Then, the moment the telegraphic communication told 

 her the lines in the web were once more free, Eliza would 

 sally forth again with a smiling face — oh yes, I assure 

 you, we could tell by her look when she was smiling— 

 and would repair afresh with cheerful alacrity the damage 

 done to her snare by the unwelcome visitor. Humming- 

 bird hawk-moths, on the other hand, though so big and 

 quick, she would kill immediately. As for Lucy, craven 

 soul, she had so little sense of proper pride and arachnid 

 honour, that she shrank even from the wasps which 



