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.
Suddenly a little sun-fairy began to clap his hands.
"I've got an idea," he cried.
As his ideas were generally full of mischief and very interesting, all the other fairies stopped talking.
"It's a lovely idea," he went on, chuckling. "This is what we'll do. We'll wait till that silly old Spider goes to sleep or is busy, and then we'll rush down—quick as quick—and steal his diamonds!"