After telling Chirpy that he wouldn’t fail him, Freddie Firefly flitted away. But in spite of what he had said Chirpy Cricket couldn’t help feeling nervous and uneasy. And he fiddled so fast that the other fiddlers kept complaining. They said he wasn’t playing in time.
Chirpy Cricket was too well-mannered to contradict them. But he had his own opinion, which he kept to himself. He thought his companions were out of time. “Goodness!” he exclaimed under his breath. “I near heard such slow fiddling in all my life!”
There was another way, too, in which Chirpy annoyed the others. He kept asking them—first one and then another—what time it was. And of course nobody wants to stop and look at his watch when he is fiddling.
At last one of his cousins told him, in answer to his question, that it was time to stop talking and pay attention to the music.
After that Chirpy Cricket tried to be patient. But it was hard not to be restless. And he kept leaping into the air, hoping to get a glimpse of Freddie Firefly’s twinkling light. For it seemed to him that Freddie would never return from the meadow.
At last the fiddlers stopped playing, one after another; for the night was going fast. The Cricket family always liked to be home before daylight.
Chirpy had almost given up hope of seeing Freddie Firefly. But to his great delight Freddie came skipping up just as Chirpy stood before Miss Christabel Cricket, whom he expected to see to her home.
“I’m glad you’ve come!” Chirpy greeted him. “I’ll take your light now. And I’ll return it to you to-morrow night.”
“Oh! That would be too much trouble for you,” Freddie Firefly said. “I’ll go right along with you and your young lady. And after I’ve lighted her home I’ll do the same thing for you.”
“Oh! That would be too much trouble for you,” Chirpy Cricket objected. “Let me take the light, please!” He certainly didn’t want Freddie Firefly tagging along with Miss Christabel Cricket and himself.