And Cricket, her dear Cricket, whom she really loved heartily, had told her she hated her, and would never forgive her, and wouldn’t ever play with her any more.
What had she done to deserve all this? Why, nothing at all; only poured a little water down the baby’s throat, when he looked so funny, lying there with his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth wide open. She didn’t know it would choke him so; of course she didn’t mean to hurt him. Such a fuss about nothing. Then, suddenly, they all flew at her, and said dreadful things, right before nurse. Hilda did not realize that such an outbreak is seldom as sudden as it seems, and that many grievances will often smoulder for a long time, till some trifle fires the flame.
She walked along, miserable enough, half-crying, half-indignant. The rain had ceased, and the sky had cleared, so she stopped by the brook in the grassy lane, which the children used as a short cut, and sat down by the little bridge. She was ashamed to go on into the village street while she was crying.
Here she and Cricket had spent many happy hours, and had never, never quarrelled before. She did not stop to think, then, to whom the credit of this belonged. Cricket certainly always did as Hilda wished, but she was sure she was equally ready to do as Cricket wished, wasn’t she? She began to think. Cricket always liked to keep on through the woods to Hilda’s house, while she liked to strike off into the village street. How seldom they went through the woods, although it was nearer, and Cricket liked it so well! Cricket loved marsh-mallows, while Hilda was devoted to chocolate-creams; but when they spent their weekly pennies together for candy, as they always did, how was it they so rarely bought marsh-mallows? Hilda’s conscience pricked her faintly.
“Well, I am always willing she should buy them, if she’d just say she would, any way,” she reflected, uneasily.
But then, Cricket never did say she “would, anyway.”
What a delight it was to her little friend to be out in the fields and woods, searching out the earliest wild-flowers, exploring for the first chestnuts, perfectly happy if she were simply out-of-doors. She, herself, preferred quiet, indoor sports and dolls, excepting when the weather just suited her, and was neither too warm nor too cold. Did they ever stay out when she did not wish to?
And she did rub out Cricket’s examples, often and often.
“Cricket was so quick,” she argued, with her conscience, “and she could do them right over, and she didn’t like to get behind herself. Cricket was such a silly, not to guess it.” And why shouldn’t she take the biggest of anything? One of them had to have it, and she was the oldest. Still, she remembered, with another faint sting of conscience, she didn’t like it when Eunice took things for the same reason, and Cricket had to yield to them both.
Had Cricket ever been heard telling the twins they must do certain things because they were younger?