to look as long as ever they liked.

They came creepy, creepy, down the attic stairs, creepy, creepy, up the
cellar stairs, creepy, creepy, along the halls,--and into the beautiful
room. The fat mother spiders and the old papa spiders were there, and all
the little teeny, tiny, curly spiders, the baby ones. And then they
looked! Round and round the tree they crawled, and looked and looked and
looked. Oh, what a good time they had! They thought it was perfectly
beautiful. And when they had looked at everything they could see from the
floor, they started up the tree to see more. All over the tree they ran,
creepy, crawly, looking at every single thing. Up and down, in and out,
over every branch and twig, the little spiders ran, and saw every one of
the pretty things right up close.

They stayed till they had seen all there was to see, you may be sure, and
then they went away at last, _quite_ happy.

Then, in the still, dark night before Christmas Day, the dear Christ-child
came, to bless the tree for the children. But when he looked at it--_what_
do you suppose?--it was covered with cobwebs! Everywhere the little
spiders had been they had left a spider-web; and you know they had been
everywhere. So the tree was covered from its trunk to its tip with
spider-webs, all hanging from the branches and looped round the twigs; it
was a strange sight.

What could the Christ-child do? He knew that house-mothers do not like
cobwebs; it would never, never do to have a Christmas Tree covered with
those. No, indeed.

So the dear Christ-child touched the spider's webs, and turned them all to