"I know," cried a fairy who was a great traveller, and had once gone on a moonbeam excursion to a large town. "It's what mortals do when they want something they haven't got, or have something they don't want."
"Yes," said Gillibloom, "that is it."
"But what good is it?" asked the other fairies.
"I don't really know," said Gillibloom: "but I think it is really very good indeed, because so many of them do it. Sometimes if you are very little and want something, and cry and cry, somebody brings it to you."
"But we don't want anything we can't get without crying," said the fairies.
"Yes, that is true," said Gillibloom. "But it can't be that so many people would cry if there wasn't some use in it. Try as I may, I can't find out what the use is, but I thought I might form a class and we could all cry together, and then we should see what happened."
Now some of the fairies were too busy painting flowers to join a class, and more were too busy riding on bees' wings, but there were a few dozen who said:
"We might as well join. Why not? It will please Gillibloom, and maybe there is some use in it, after all."
So Gillibloom appointed the next night by the banks of the Standing Pool, for, he said, it would be quite impossible at first to cry anywhere except by the side of still water.
The next night they were all there, twenty-seven of them, each with a moss-cup in his hand.