middle of it!

At first sight of him Miss Muffet felt all her old terror returning,
and had half a mind to fly away again. But then she remembered that
she had come to do a brave deed, and she held her big thorn tighter,
and forced herself to look at the Spider as he struggled in the curds
and whey.

"That will make it easier," she said, as she balanced herself on the
rim of the bowl. "He will not be able to fly away when I start to stab
him," and she poised the thorn all ready for a vigorous thrust.

The Spider looked up at her.

"Gracious lady," he began humbly. "Can you direct me as to the best
way out of this pond?"

Miss Muffet was so astonished at being addressed so humbly and so
politely by such a formidable person as the Spider, that she lowered
her spear-point in order to look at him more closely.

"Gracious lady," began the Spider again. "I beg you will show me the
way to get out of this pond soon. I have eight hours more work to do
to-night before my task is done."

"Work!" said Miss Muffet, almost to herself. "Do _you_ do any work?"

"Toil and spin, toil and spin, year in, year out," said the Spider
sadly. "It is my masterpiece that I am finishing to-night,--a woven
counterpane, light as air, threaded with sparkling dewdrops. I was
just going out to fetch a few more, and thought there might be some in
this pond; but it is a sticky pond, and I fell in, and now I cannot get
out again."

"Well, of all the idiots!" began Miss Muffet. "Of course you won't
find dewdrops in there," she continued hastily. "But tell me some more
about your work?"

So the Spider, still struggling in the curds and whey, told on. How he
helped the gardener by eating up the flies; how day and night he toiled
and spun, making and weaving carpets and counterpanes from silken
threads that he himself spun out of nothing. "It was my masterpiece I
was to finish to-night," he said again at the end.

All the while he was talking a great struggle was going on in Miss
Muffet's mind.

She raised the thorn again.

"I came here to kill him. I shall be a coward and turn into a mortal
if I don't kill him," she said to herself. "But if I kill him he will
never finish his masterpiece. Supposing I don't kill him after all,
but help him out, then he can finish his work and be happy." She
looked at him again and shuddered.

"Oh, if I help him out he will eat me!" she cried. "I _will_ be brave
and kill him."

So she shou