eyes open as wide as she could. Her brothers and sisters were quietly sleeping around her, and she laughed at what she called their stupidity.
By and by she began to grow tired, when suddenly a huge black spider seized her in his claws. She cried out in terror, but no one was awake to hear her.
He held her so tight that she could scarcely breathe, and tears stood in her large, dark eyes. In the gray dawn he spun a web over her face, and fastened it to a neighboring shrub.
Her mother awoke early, and lamented over her; "Oh, my poor daughter, would that I could help you! Perhaps He, to whom you forgot to pray, who is so good to all, may yet cause these chains to fall from you."
Bitterly did the young pansy deplore her disobedience. Her fright, and the spider's cords, with their tight lacing, had so compressed her heart and lungs, that she turned pale, and panted for breath.
When the noon-day sun beat fiercely upon her, she drooped and faded away—saying, with her last, faint sigh, "Oh! brothers and sisters, take warning by my sad fate. Never disobey our dear mother, for she is wiser than we."
