“Yes, the dust covers the colours of the flowers almost as soon as we have painted them. But see the gold of those daffodils! I like the reds and blues of the other flowers, too. They seem brighter than ever to-day. Sometimes I sit all day and look at them.”
“Oh! we have a rainbow this afternoon. It always looks to me like a great garden of flowers stretched in bands across the sky. I like to think that its yellow and red and blue are made up of flowers like these in our garden here.”
“Do you see that colour next to the green? I love it; it is so dark and deep. Many times I have wished we might have a flower on earth just like it.”
“Surely you, Fairy Artist, would have no trouble to make a colour like that; at least, it would do no harm for you to try.”
The fairy artist sat with her eyes turned toward the rainbow until it had faded from sight, and long after the sun had sunk to rest, she sat alone under the trees, thinking.
One morning she called all the fairies to her. “Dear fairies,” she said, “I am going to try to make a colour like that dark one in the rainbow. It may take me a long, long while, but one cannot give the children a greater joy than to add a new colour to the flowers on earth.”
No one knew better than she that a great task lay before her. Many days and weeks she tried. Sometimes the mixture was lighter than the colour in the rainbow, and sometimes it seemed too dark—never quite what she wished it to be.
Once, as she stood before the large bowl, mixing and stirring patiently—she stopped, and the fairies in the garden heard a shout of joy: “I have it! the beautiful colour! the beautiful colour!”
They hurried to the place where she always stood with her bowl and brush.