"My diamonds must be sparkling beautifully in this sunshine. I'll just
take a look at them."
He turned round, expecting to see the pattern of his web delicately
outlined in sparks of light. You will not be surprised to hear that he
saw nothing of the kind. He saw his web, it is true, looking like filmy
lace against the green 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 time, and all the time
that it lasted the Big Spider was in a rage.
[Illustration: THE WEB AND THE DIAMONDS AND THE BIG SPIDER HIMSELF ALL
FELL TO THE GROUND]
At last the rain-fairies won the fight, and went off with the diamonds
in their arms.
"Now we'll throw them to the Big Spider," they said, "and we'll see how
glad he is when his web is hung with diamonds as it was before."
They forgot that the dew-fairies, when they had trimmed the web with the
diamonds, had crept up softly and touched the strings with gentle
fingers. But the rain-fairies are rather rough.
They flung out their little arms and threw the diamonds down out of the
black cloud. Down dropped the diamonds, and down, and down, till they
reached the garden where the Big Spider lived, and the web that the Big
Spider had made. But instead of hanging on the web in rows, like little
lighted lamps, they dropped into the middle of it with a crash and a
dash and a splash, and broke it into a great many pieces, so that the
web and the diamonds and the Big Spider himself all fell to the ground.
And by the time the Big Spider was standing on all his legs again the
diamonds had disappeared into the grass.
The truth is that the dew-fairies had found them and had taken them
home. I expect they will keep them till the Big Spider has made a new
web.
_A LITTLE GIRL IN A BOOK_
Christabel was a little girl who read a great many books. She noticed
that the girls and boys in the books were not altogether like the girls
and boys who played with her in the Square and came to tea with her. The
children in the books were wonderfully brave and clever; and when they
were having their magnificent adventures they always did exactly the
right thing at the right moment. They never had a dull minute, and they
never said anything silly. The girls and boys who came to tea with
Christabel were not like this, and Christabel knew that she herself was
not like this. She never had any adventures, and she knew that even if
she ever did have one she would not behave at all bravely or cleverly.
And she was often so dull that she drummed with her fingers on the
window and said--
"What on earth shall I do?"
Now, Christabel had a Big Sister who wrote books.