FAIRIES I HAVE MET
admiring his own web that he had no attention to spare for the others.
"Good morning," he said pleasantly to a fly who was passing. "Have you seen my diamonds? They look very well there, don't they? They show off the pattern of the web. Won't you come a little closer? You can hardly see them properly at that distance. One really sees them best when one is inside the web. Can't you come in this morning?"
"No, thank you," said the fly firmly; for his mother had told him that the Big Spider was not a nice friend for little flies.
Then he flew away, and the Spider went on admiring his diamonds. He looked at them first from the right, and then from the left, and then he stepped backwards and looked at them again. If you have ever seen a person who paints pictures you will know exactly how he behaved.
All this time the sun-fairies had been peeping through the hole in the black cloud and watching the Big Spider. They could not help laughing at him.
"Ridiculous creature!" cried one. "Look at him admiring his web, as if it were the only one that had ever been hung with diamonds!"
"If he would look about him a little bit," said another, "he would see that the whole garden is blazing with diamonds this morning."
"The very grass is all twinkly and shiny with them," said a third, "but the grass-fairies are not behaving in that absurd way."
"No fairy would be so silly," said a fourth.
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