Almost at an open quarrel, they stumbled through the tangled sedges and trailing underwood upon the bank of the stream. The tireder Herbert grew, the crosser he was, and the worse luck he had with his fishing—and he had very bad luck!—the surer he was that Merrylips was to blame.
Soon he began to mock and to tease her, and once, when she tripped over a fallen branch, he laughed outright.
"You may laugh," cried Merrylips, "but haply you'd not find it easy to keep your feet, if you bore a great basket, and if you wore hateful petticoats a-dangling round your feet. I would that you had to wear petticoats but once!"
"Thou'rt weeping now!" jeered Herbert.
Merrylips made herself laugh in his face.
"'Tis only silly boys that weep," said she. "When their fathers beat them, they snivel, and run with tales to their mothers."
The quarrel had begun in earnest. For the next half mile the tired children tramped in angry silence. Then Herbert snatched the creel from Merrylips.
"'Tis mine!" he said.
He sat down on a grassy bank and opened the creel. Within it were spice cakes and cheese and a little chicken pasty, and every crumb that greedy boy munched down himself, and never offered so much as one spice cake to Merrylips.
Perhaps he hoped that she would ask for a share of the luncheon, but in that case he was disappointed. Merrylips was hungry indeed, after the long walk in the autumn air, but she would have starved before she would have begged of Herbert.