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.
One day she said to her Big Sister—
"How I do wish I were a little girl in a book! Nothing ever happens to little girls in real life. It is so dull!"