FAIRIES I HAVE MET
of the grass; but there was not one single diamond hanging upon it!
Then the rage of the Big Spider was terrible to see.
He stamped with all his legs, and he rolled himself round and round, and he used all the most dreadful threats in spider-language.
"I don't care who the thief is," he said; "I shall think no more of eating him than if he were a fly!"
At that moment he heard the sweetest little laugh just behind him. This made him so angry that he spent a long time in looking for the person who laughed. While he was still searching the sun-fairies flew up again to the black clouds, carrying the diamonds with them.
"There," they said, as they threw the diamonds down on the cloud, "he won't find them there!"
They had forgotten for the moment that, hidden in the black cloud, there were a great number of rain-fairies. Now the rain-fairies never enjoy themselves so much as when they are annoying the sun-fairies: and in the same way there is nothing that pleases the sun-fairies so much as a good quarrel with the rain-fairies. This does not prevent them from being very friendly when they are not quarrelling.
The rain-fairies had seen all that had happened. They pretended to think that the sun-fairies had behaved very unkindly to the Big Spider.
"It's too bad," they said, "to steal the poor thing's diamonds. It's not fair. Let's throw them down to him."
Then a great fight began between the sun-fairies and the rain-fairies for the diamonds, and the fight lasted a long
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