At the end of thirty-three and a third years he came back again, and
he found the fairies dancing just as if they had never left off. They
were all perfectly delighted to see him, and they left off dancing and
crowded round him and cried out all together, which is the way the
fairies sometimes talk: "O Gillibloom, what have you learned?"
Gillibloom looked at them a few minutes very solemnly, as if he wanted
them to pay great attention to what he was going to say. Then he
answered: "I have not really learned anything, but I have almost
learned to cry."
"To cry, Gillibloom?" called the fairies. "What is that?"
"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.
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