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“Ho!” said the fairies, “is that all? We can do that without being taught.”

So they wrinkled up their foreheads and shut their eyes and drew down their mouths and dipped their fingers in the moss-cups, and sprinkled their faces, and made a bellowing noise, and they said proudly: “Now we are almost crying, too.”

Gillibloom had opened his eyes and wiped his cheeks on a bit of everlasting petal.

“That was very good,” he said, “very good indeed! To-morrow we will go on with the second lesson.”

But the twenty-seventh fairy was thinking just then that he might have been dancing all this time, and he said: “Gillibloom, I don’t see what good it will do.”

“It must be remembered that we have only learned Almost Crying to-day,” said Gillibloom, with dignity. “When we have learned Quite Crying it will be a different matter.”

“I can’t help it,” said the twenty-seventh fairy. “I’m not coming any more. Anybody want my cup?”

But nobody did, because all the other pupils had kept their cups very carefully, and he tossed it into the Standing Pool and danced away through the forest, singing:

“School’s dismissed! School’s dismissed!
Out of so many I shan’t be missed.
By and by they’ll learn to cry.
But if any one’s there, it won’t be I.
I’d rather sing or dance or fly,
Or swim in a puddle where star-shines lie.
I’ll not cry–not I!”

And the next day it was just the same. The twenty-six fairies, sat by the side of the Standing Pool, and Gillibloom wrinkled up his forehead and shut his eyes and drew down his mouth and bellowed and wet his cheeks with water out of his moss-cup, and they all did the same, and then they said: “Now we are Almost Crying.”

But when the lesson was over, the twenty-sixth fairy said he had some wheat ripening to attend to in a field ever so far away, and the next day the twenty-fifth fairy said there was a Crow Caucus on, and he wanted to see what they meant to do about the scare-crow in the field they owned, and he couldn’t come any more, and the next day the twenty-fourth fairy said there were ever so many dancing steps he hadn’t practised for a long time, and he couldn’t come any more, and the next day the twenty-third fairy said there was a queer-shaped leaf on the watercress down by the spring, and he thought he ought to look round a bit and see if there were any more like it, and he couldn’t come any more.

And so it went on until Gillibloom was the only one left, and he sat by the Standing Pool and dished up water to splash his face and wrinkled up his forehead and shut his eyes and drew down his mouth and bellowed; and whenever the rest of the fairies heard him or saw him, they clapped their hands over their eyes, and put their fingers in their ears, and ran away as hard as they could. And so it happened that the forest about the Standing Pool was perfectly quiet, for no bird or squirrel or bee or any other thing that lives and breathes in the forest will stay after the fairies are gone.

And the Sun looked in and said: “There is nobody there but that silly Gillibloom, and he is Almost Crying all the time. I’ll go away somewhere else.”

And the Moon looked down at night and said: “Why, there’s nothing in that forest but a Dreadful Sound. There’s no use in my troubling myself to squeeze down through the branches, for sounds can get along just as well by themselves.”

So she drove off very fast to the fairy green, and rolled such a river of light into the fairy ring that the fairies gave up dancing, and got flower-cups and sailed on the river, and some who couldn’t stop to get flower-cups swam in it, and it was the gayest night ever to be remembered.