Day after day the spider waited, head-down, for an
idea to come to her. Hour by hour she sat motionless, deep in thought. Having
promised Wilbur that she would save his life, she was determined to keep her
promise.
Charlotte
was naturally patient. She knew from experience that if she waited long enough,
a fly would come to her web; and she felt sure that if she thought long enough
about Wilbur’s problem, and idea would come to her mind.
Finally,
one morning toward the middle of July, the idea came. “Why, how perfectly
simple!” she said to herself. “The way to save Wilbur’s life is to play a trick
on Zuckerman. If I can fool a bug,” thought Charlotte, “I can surely fool a
man. People are not as smart as bugs.”
Wilbur
walked into his yard just at that moment.
“What are you
thinking about, Charlotte?” he asked.
“I was just
thinking,” said the spider, “that people are very gullible.”
“What does
‘gullible’ mean?”
“Easy to fool,”
said Charlotte.
“That’s a
mercy,” replied Wilbur, and he lay down in the shade of his fence and went fast
asleep. The spider, however, stayed wide awake, gazing affectionately at him
and making plans for his future. Summer was half gone. She knew she didn’t have
much time.
That
morning, just as Wilbur fell asleep, Avery Arable wandered into the Zuckerman’s
front yard, followed by Fern. Avery carried a live frog in his hand. Fern had a
crown of daisies in her hair. The children ran for the kitchen.
“Just in time
for a piece of blueberry pie,” said Mrs. Zuckerman.
“Look at my
frog!” said Avery, placing the frog on the drainboard and holding out his hand
for pie.
“Take that
thing out of here!” said Mrs. Zuckerman.
“He’s hot,”
said Fern. “He’s almost dead, that frog.”
“He is not,”
said Avery. “He lets me scratch him between the eyes.” The frog jumped and
landed in Mrs. Zuckerman’s dishpan full of soapy water.
“You’re getting
your pie on you,” said Fern. “Can I look for eggs in the henhouse, Aunt Edith?”
“Run outdoors,
both of you! And don’t bother the hens!”
“It’s getting
all over everything,” shouted Fern. “His pie is all over his front.”
“Come on, frog!”
cried Avery. He scooped up his frog. The fog kicked, splashing soapy water onto
the blueberry pie.
“Another
crisis!” groaned Fern.
“Let’s swing in
the swing!” said Avery.
The
children ran to the barn.
Mr.
Zuckerman had the best swing in the county. It was a single long piece of heavy
rope tied to the beam over the north doorway. At the bottom end of the rope was
a fat knot to sit on. It was arranged so that you could swing without being
pushed. You climbed a ladder to the hayloft. Then, holding the rope, you stood
at the edge and looked down, and were scared and dizzy. Then you straddled the
knot, so that it acted as a seat. Then you got up all your nerve, took a deep
breath, and jumped. For a second you seemed to be falling to the barn floor far
below, but then suddenly the rope would begin to catch you, and you would sail
through the barn door going a mile a minute, with the wind whistling in your
eyes and ears and hair. Then you would zoom upward into the sky, and look up at
the clouds, and the rope would twist and you would twist and turn with the
rope. Then you would drop down, down, down out of the sky and come sailing back
into the barn almost into the hayloft, then sail out again (not quite so far this
time), then in again (not quite so high), then out again, then in again, then
out, then in; and then you’d jump off and fall down and let somebody else try
it.
Mothers
for miles around worried about Zuckerman’s swing. They feared some child would
fall off. But no child ever did. Children almost always hang onto things
tighter than their parents think they will.
Avery
put the frog in his pocket and climbed to the hayloft. “The last time I swang
in this swing, I almost crashed into a barn swallow,” he yelled.
“Take that frog
out!” ordered Fern.
Avery
straddled the rope and jumped. He sailed out through the door, frog and all,
and into the sky, frog and all. Then he sailed back into the barn.
“Your tongue is
purple!” screamed Fern.
“So is yours!”
cried Avery, sailing out again with the frog.
“I have hay
inside my dress! It itches!” called Fern.
“Scratch it!”
yelled Avery, as he sailed back.
“It’s my turn,”
said Fern. “Jump off!”
“Fern’s got the
itch1” sang Avery.
When
he jumped off, he threw the swing up to his sister. She shut her eyes tight and
jumped. She felt the dizzy drop, then the supporting lift of the swing. When
she opened her eyes she was looking up into the blue sky and was about to fly
back through the door.
They
took turns for and hour.
When
the children grew tired of swinging, they went down toward the pasture and
picked wild raspberries and ate them. Their tongues turned from purple to red.
Fern bit into a raspberry that had a bad-tasting bug inside it, and got discouraged.
Avery found and empty candy box and put his frog in it. The frog seemed tired
after his morning in the swing. The children walked slowly up toward the barn.
They, too, were tired and hardly had energy enough to walk.
“Let’s build a
tree house,” suggested Avery. “I want to live in a tree, with my frog.”
“I’m going to
visit Wilbur,” Fern announced.
They
climbed the fence into the lane and walked lazily toward the pigpen. Wilbur
heard them coming and got up.
Avery
noticed the spider web, and , coming closer, he saw Charlotte.
“Hey, look at
that big spider!” he said. “It’s tremendous.”
“Leave it
alone!” commanded Fern. “You’ve got a frog—isn’t that enough?”
“That’s a fine
spider and I’m going to capture it,” said Avery. He took the cover off the
candy box. Then he picked up a stick. “I’m going to knock that old spider into
this box,” he said.
Wilbur’s
heart almost stopped when he saw what was going on. This might be the end of
Charlotte if the boy succeeded in catching her.
“You stop it, Avery!”
cried Fern.
Avery
put one leg over the fence of the pigpen. He was just about to raise his stick
to hit Charlotte when he lost his balance. He swayed and toppled and landed on
the edge of Wilbur’s trough. The trough tipped up and then came down with a
slap. The goose egg was right underneath. There was a dull explosion as the egg
broke, and then a horrible smell.
Fern
screamed. Avery jumped to his feet. The air was filled with the terrible gases
and smells from the rotten egg. Templeton, who had been resting in his home,
scuttled away into the barn.
“Good night!”
screamed Avery. “Good night! What a stink! Let’s get out of here!”
Fern
was crying. She held her nose and ran toward the house. Avery ran after her,
holding his nose. Charlotte felt greatly relieved to see him go. It had been a
narrow escape.
Later
on that morning, the animals came up from the pasture—the sheep, the lambs, the
gander, the goose, and the seven goslings. There were many complaints about the
awful smell, and Wilbur had to tell the story over and over again, of how the
Arable boy had tried to capture Charlotte, and how the smell of the broken egg
drove him away just in time. “It was that rotten goose egg that saved
charlotte’s life,” said Wilbur.
The
goose was proud of her share in the adventure. “I’m delighted that the egg
never hatched,” she gabbled.
Templeton,
of course, was miserable over the loss of his beloved egg. But he couldn’t
resist boasting. “It pays to save things,” he said in his surly voice. “A rat
never knows when something is going to come in handy. I never throw anything
away.
“Well,” said
one of the lambs, “this whole business is all well and good for Charlotte, but
what about the rest of us? The smell is unbearable. Who wants to live in a barn
that is perfumed with rotten egg?”
“Don’t worry,
you’ll get used to it,” said Templeton. He sat up and pulled wisely at his long
whiskers, then crept away to pay a visit to the dump.
When
Lurvy showed up at lunchtime carrying a pail of food for Wilbur, he stopped
short a few paces from the pigpen. He sniffed the air and made a face.
“What in
thunder?” he said. Setting the pail down, he picked up the stick that Avery had
dropped and pried the trough up. “Rats!” he said. “Fhew! I might a’known a rat
would make a nest under this trough. How I hate a rat!”
And
Lurvy dragged Wilbur’s trough across the yard and kicked some dirt into the
rat’s nest, burying the broken egg and all Templeton’s other possessions. Then
he picked up the pail. Wilbur stood in the trough, drooling with hunger. Lurvy
poured. The slops ran creamily down around the pig’s eyes and ears. Wilbur
grunted. He gulped and sucked, making swishing and swooshing noises, anxious to
get everything at once. It was a delicious meal—skim milk, wheat middlings,
leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of
stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several
noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll,
a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of
raspberry jello.
Wilbur
ate heartily. He planned to leave half a noodle and a few drops of milk for
Templeton. Then he remembered that the rat had been useful in saving
Charlotte’s life, and that Charlotte was trying to save
his life. So he left a whole noodle, instead of a half.
Now
that the broken egg was buried, the air cleared and the barn smelled good
again. The afternoon passed, and evening came. Shadows lengthened. The cool and
kindly breath of evening entered through doors and windows. Astride her web,
Charlotte sat moodily eating a horsefly and thinking about the future. After a
while she bestirred herself.
She
descended to the center of the web and there she began to cut some of her lines.
She worked slowly but steadily while the other creatures drowsed. None of the
others, not even the goose, noticed that she was at work. Deep in his soft bed,
Wilbur snoozed. Over in their favorite corner, the goslings whistled a night
song.
Charlotte
tore quite a section out of her web, leaving an open space in the middle. Then
she started weaving something to take the place of the threads she had removed.
When Templeton got back from the dump, around midnight, the spider was still at
work.