After Joy was asleep, Mrs. Breynton said she would like to see Gypsy a few moments downstairs.
"Yes'm," said Gypsy, and came slowly down. They sat down in the dining-room alone. Mrs. Breynton drew up her rocking-chair by the fire, and Gypsy took the cricket.
There was a silence. Gypsy had an uncomfortable feeling that her mother was waiting for her to speak first. She kicked off her slipper, and put it on; she rattled the tongs, and pounded the hearth with the poker; she smoothed her hair out of her eyes, and folded up her handkerchief six times; she looked up sideways at her mother; then she began to cough. At last she broke out—
"I suppose you want me to say I'm sorry. Well, I am. But I don't see why I'm to blame, I'm sure."
"I haven't said you were to blame," said her mother, quietly. "You know I have had no time yet to hear what happened this afternoon, and I thought you would like to tell me."
"Well," said Gypsy, "I'd just as lief;" and Gypsy looked a little, a very little, as if she hadn't just as lief at all. "You see, 'in the first place and commencing,' as Winnie says, Joy wanted to take him. Now, she doesn't know anything about that child, not a thing, and if she'd taken him to places as much as I have, and had to lug him home screaming all the way, I guess she would have stopped wanting to, pretty quick, and I always take Winnie when I can, you know now, mother; and then Joy wouldn't talk going over, either."
"Whom did she walk with?" interrupted Mrs. Breynton.
"Why, with Winnie, I believe. Of course she might have come on with Sarah and Delia and me if she'd wanted to, but—I don't know——"
"Very well," said Mrs. Breynton, "go on."
"Then, you see, Joy didn't like chestnuts, and couldn't climb, and—oh, Winnie kept losing his shoes, and got stuck in the fence, and you never saw anything so funny! And then Joy couldn't climb, and she just hung there swinging; and now, mother, I couldn't help laughing to save me, it was so exactly like a great pendulum with hoops on. Well, Joy was mad 'cause we laughed and all, and so she said she'd go home. Then—let me see—oh, it was after that, Winnie tumbled into the ditch, splash in! with his feet up in the air, and I thought I should go off to see him."