And when she heard Gillibloom come screaming through
the forest, she stepped to her door and stood waiting for him, and in
a minute he was there, and laid hold of her skirts and clung to them.
"Well! Well!" said the Earth-Woman, "and who is this?" Then she
stooped down and took up Gillibloom between her thumb and forefinger,
and looked at him. "By acorns and nuts!" said she. "It's the Cry
Fairy."
"No! no!" said Gillibloom. "No! no! I'm the Almost Cry Fairy. I'm
never going to Quite Cry, for I don't know what it would do to me."
The Earth-Woman laid her finger to Gillibloom's cheek and touched it
and put it, all wet, to her lips. She nodded and then shook her head.
"Well," said she, "you were a silly, weren't you? Now what do you want
me to do?"
Gillibloom kept on bellowing.
"I want to be with the others."
"What others?" asked the Earth-Woman severely. "The other cry-babies?"
"The fairies and the furs and the feathers and the wings and the fins
and the tails and the sun and the moon," bellowed Gillibloom, though
now you could hardly have understood a word he said.
But the Earth-Woman could understand. She understood everything.
"Then," she said, "you must open your eyes, smooth out your forehead
and pull up your mouth, and stop that noise.
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