and those instantaneous ones; for they change, every moment, not by
starts, but with a deliberate ease which would be grace in anything
less horribly ugly, into postures such as Callot or Breughel never
fancied for the ugliest imps who ever tormented St. Anthony. All
absurd efforts of agility which you ever saw at a seance of the
Hylobates Lar Club at Cambridge are quiet and clumsy compared to the
rope-dancing which goes on in the boughs of the Poui tree, or, to
their great detriment, of the Bougainvillea and the Gardenia on the
lawn. But with all this, Spider is the gentlest, most obedient, and
most domestic of beasts. Her creed is, that yellow bananas are the
summum bonum; and that she must not come into the dining-room, or
even into the verandah; whither, nevertheless, she slips, in fear
and trembling, every morning, to steal the little green parrot's
breakfast out of his cage, or the baby's milk, or fruit off the
side-board; in which case she makes her appearance suddenly and
silently, sitting on the threshold like a distorted fiend; and
begins scratching herself, looking at everything except the fruit,
and pretending total absence of mind, till the proper moment comes
for unwinding her lengthy ugliness, and making a snatch at the
table. Poor weak-headed thing, full of foolish cunning; always
doing wrong, and knowing that it is wrong, but quite unable to
resist temptation; and then profuse in futile explanations,
gesticulations, mouthings of an 'Oh!--oh!--oh!' so pitiably human,
that you can only punish her by laughing at her, which she does not
at all like. One cannot resist the fancy, while watching her,
either that she was once a human being, or that she is trying to
become one. But, at present, she has more than one habit to learn,
or to recollect, ere she become as fit for human society as the dog
or the cat. {89} Her friends are, every human being who will take
notice of her, and a beautiful little Guazupita, or native deer, a