Off they scampered to the woods again, and the Fairies kept on singing their song, while the Daisy watched with its yellow eye, wondering how her cousin, the White Cup, would be made the color for which she had wished.
By and by the Goblins came back, but this time they carried bags over their shoulders and they crept carefully through the grass.
The Fairies saw them all the time, but of course they pretended not to, and when the Goblins were quite near the Queen said:
"Come, my children; leave your best-loved flower for to-night. To-morrow you shall come again."
As they were flying away they glanced back, and in the moonlight they saw the Goblins hard at work over each little White Cup.
When the morning sun awoke he opened wide his eyes, for all over the field among the Daisies he beheld little Golden Cups nodding gaily at their cousins with the golden eyes.
The next night when the Fairies came flying through the fields they saw the Yellow Cups. "You are more beautiful than ever," they said to the Golden Cups, "and we will call you our Golden Cups, but you must be known as the Buttercups or the Goblins will discover our trick and make you white again."
The Buttercups thanked the Fairies and told them they would be glad to be their cups whenever they gave a banquet and that never would they let the Goblins know the Fairies had fooled them.
So they bloom among the Daisies in the fields and are called Buttercups, but they know to the Fairies they are the little Golden Cups, and the Goblins wonder why the Fairies always seem so happy when they fly near the Buttercup and find it changed.
The Fairies are too wise to let the Goblins know how they fooled them and gained for the Buttercups the very color that they wanted, but it is rather hard sometimes not to tell them when the little Goblins scamper about and try to upset their plans.