hy don't you stay on the wall?" said the ass.

"Sure, my wife is there," replied the spider.

"What's the harm in that?" said the ass.

"She'd eat me," said the spider, "and, anyhow, the competition on the
wall is dreadful, and the flies are getting wiser and timider every
season. Have you got a wife yourself, now?"

"I have not," said the ass; "I wish I had."

"You like your wife for the first while," said the spider, "and after
that you hate her."

"If I had the first while I'd chance the second while," replied the ass.

"It's bachelor's talk," said the spider; "all the same, we can't keep
away from them," and so saying he began to move all his legs at once in
the direction of the wall. "You can only die once," said he.

"If your wife was an ass she wouldn't eat you," said the ass.

"She'd be doing something else then," replied the spider, and he climbed
up the wall.

The first man came back with the can of water and they sat down on the
grass and ate the cake and drank the water. All the time the woman kept
her eyes fixed on the Philosopher.

"Mister Honey," said she, "I think you met us just at the right moment."

The other two men sat upright and looked at each other and then with
equal intentness they looked at the woman.

"Why do you say that?" said the Philosopher.

"We were having a great argument along the road, and if we were to
be talking from now to the dav of doom that argument would never be
finished."

"It must have been a great argument. Was it about predestination or
where consciousness comes from?"

"It was not; it was which of these two men was to marry me."

"That's not a great argument," said the Philosopher.

"Isn't it," said the woman. "For seven days and six nights we didn't
talk about anything else, and that's a great argument or I'd like to
know what is."

"But where is the trouble, ma'am?" said the Philosopher.

"It's this," she replied, "that I can't make up my mind which of the men
I'll take, for I like one as well as the other and better, and I'd as
soon have one as the other and rather."

"It's a hard case," said the Philosopher.

"It is," said the woman, "and I'm sick and sorry with the trouble of
it."

"And why did you say that I had come up in a good minute?"

"Because, Mister Honey, when a woman has two men to choose from she
doesn't know what to do, for two men always become like brothers so
that you wouldn't know which of them was which: there isn't any