NOISY FRIENDS.
The next morning Fritz and Ella came over quite early, before Violet
was up, to see her. Her head ached still, and Aunt Lizzie had advised
her to stay in bed until after her dinner. All night she had lain with
the silver watch clasped in her hand, and all the morning too she had
held it tightly pressed in towards her. "It had belonged once to a
little girl who was now in heaven;" that had been the burden of her
thoughts ever since she had heard its history. "This little sick child
had stretched out her wings and flown straight up to God." The doctor
had said so; and she remembered a day, long ago, when she had heard her
father say to her mother that the doctor was the best and kindest man
in all Edelsheim. And then poor Violet, burying her head deep down in
the pillows, had said, in a low voice of entreaty, "O good Lord Jesus,
give Violet wings, too, and take her soon to heaven."
Fritz was, for him, quite nervous when he first entered the room, and
Ella kept as much in his shadow as possible. Every one in the house
and in the street had been talking about Violet, and her great trouble
since the departure of the regiment; and Fritz had come to look upon
his little friend as a kind of curiosity, to be approached with an
unusual degree of compassion and gentleness.
But the ruse of the old policeman, to distract her thoughts for a time,
had succeeded almost beyond his hopes. She was quite like herself
this morning, and stretched out her hand at once to her playfellows
affectionately, and said with some excitement,--
"Fritz, look at my watch."
"Thy watch! Who gave it thee?"
"I do not know," she said, with a slow, sweet smile; "it came in the
basket. It has got forget-me-nots on one side, and Margaret on the
other; and the little girl it belonged to is in heaven."
"How dost thou know?"
"The doctor said so. She was very very sick, and when the flowers and
the larks came, God gave her wings, and she flew right up there."
"Where?" asked Fritz.
"There; far away, over the roofs and over the steeple, high, high;
ever so high up, up, till at last she was with God."
"And who was she? what was her name?" questioned Fritz.
"I do not know," said Violet, shaking her head. "But, Fritz, I was
wondering. I was thinking all last night that perhaps it was the same
little sick girl who had the book. Thou rememberest, dost thou not? It
came in the basket too."
"What book?"
"About the little hunchback," said Violet in a whisper.
"Oh!" cried Fritz, with quite a visible start; "yes; of course I
remember the fairy-tale book. We thought at first it was the girl with
the oranges; but she cannot be in heaven, because I saw her to-day."
"No, not a bit of that girl is in heaven," cried Ella joyously. "Fritz
and I saw her to-day. Fritz climbed up the steps, and gave her hair a
chuck; and she jumped round so fast that she fell over, and bumped down
every step--bump, bump, bump--and all the oranges galloped after her.
When she got to the bottom," screamed Ella, "she was sitting in the
middle of her own basket, and her heels up in the air--so;" and Ella
plumped down on her back on the floor, and elevated two of the stoutest
legs imaginable.
"She bellowed after us that she would call the police," cried Fritz,
continuing the story with much zest; "but I screamed back to her that
the police would put her in prison for sticking pins in her oranges
and sucking them, as I have seen her do hundreds of times. Then she
flew into a worse rage, and said that she would run home and tell her
father. So Ella and I laughed, for she would have a long way to run to
tell her father--would she not, Violet?"
"Yes," she said quickly; but the smile which had risen at the
children's story suddenly died out from her lips.
Fritz said, "Perhaps she would have to run all the way to Paris; and it
would be nicer to pick up oranges out of the gutter than cannon balls,
and be bursted all to pieces by powder."
Aunt Lizzie cried "Hush!" and rose from her chair by the stove; but the
children did not hear her, and went on excitedly,--
"And do you know, there has been fighting already, and lots of people
killed; but not in our regiment," added Fritz hastily, for he was
alarmed at the sudden agony that came into Violet's face.
"I saw the picture," cried Ella at the tip-top of her voice. "I saw it
in the shop window--a man climbing up a great steep rock with no head
on him at all. It had just been banged off his body by a gun. And
another man on his face, with only one leg. And dost thou know what
Fritz said? If he had been there the French people would never have got
into that town--not they, old blockheads as they are."
"What town?" asked Violet, almost in a whisper.
"Saarbrück, near the Rhine. But it was all a shabby trick of the
French; so all the people say. And we will make them pay for it
by-and-by; see if we won't. We will hunt them out of it again with
cannons, and powders, and drums."
"Yes, with powders and drums!" shouted Ella.--"And dost thou know,
Violet, Fritz wanted to go to the war with father, and beat a big
drum all day with an apron on him; and he screamed so, father said
'Perhaps.' And all night Ella cried and cried, and never stopped; and
in the morning father got out of his bed and kissed Ella, and said
Fritz must stay at home and take care of me. And Fritz was in such a
rage he tore Ella's night-cap in two, and flung it in the bread-oven."
"Come, now, we have had enough noise for one afternoon," said Aunt
Lizzie quietly. "Suppose we all sit round the stove and let Violet
rest; her head has ached all the morning, and she looks very tired."
"Oh no, Aunt Lizzie; let them stay," said Violet and she stretched out
her hands to the children. "I have not seen Fritz for so many days, nor
Ella either."
"Mother would not let us come," said Fritz bluntly. "She said thou
wouldst be busy saying good-bye to thy father and crying, and it would
be no use bothering."
"Yes, very busy crying," said Ella plaintively.
"And I am going to begin now and say my prayers," observed Fritz,
whose eyes had suddenly rested on Violet's Bible lying on the table
beside her bed. "Mother says Ella and I ought to pray every morning and
every night for father to come home safe; and so I am going to begin
to-night."
"And didst thou not always say thy prayers every morning and every
night?" asked Aunt Lizzie in some surprise.
"Oh yes, I always say them," observed Fritz; "but I don't think about
them; at least not much."
"He does not think about them one scrap," said Ella cheerfully; "he
stares at the wall, and goes sound asleep; and sometimes he looks round
at me, and begins to laugh; and sometimes he rattles his heels on the
ground until mother comes up and smacks him."
Aunt Lizzie shook her head at this history; and Violet said in a very
low voice,--
"O Fritz, is not Ella joking?"
"No," replied Fritz truthfully. "I don't much care for saying prayers.
I like to ask God for things which I think he will give me, but it
tires me to say the same thing so often. At least one month I used to
pray every day for a lovely gray pony that was in the field, and I
never got it. And, besides, every morning when I woke I used always to
say to God, 'Good Lord God, make little Violet well;' and yet thou art
still sick, and weaker and weaker. And then," continued Fritz, bending
close down beside her, and speaking in a whisper, "once I prayed in the
day, too, when I read that book about the little hunchback girl. I went
straight home and asked God to give thee wings too; and yet thou hast
never got them."
"Yes," said Ella in a very grave tone, having overheard the whisper,
"he went straight home and locked the door, and would not let Ella in;
and Ella banged and banged, and it was all no use. And then she put her
eye to the keyhole, and Fritz was saying his prayers at the kitchen
table; and Ella heard him say, 'Please, good Lord Jesus, put wings on
Violet's hump, like the little girl in the story. Amen.'"
"Hush! we have had quite enough talking for one day," cried Aunt Lizzie
again hurriedly, her face flushing crimson, as she gazed in anguish at
the little sick girl in the bed. "Away with thee, Ella! away with thee
too, Fritz! I cannot have my little girl tired."
But Violet flung her arms round Fritz's neck affectionately, and cried
out gratefully, "Thou dear, good Fritz!" Then putting her lips to his
ear, she said in a low whisper, "The Lord Jesus does always hear when
Fritz prays, and he will give me wings, and he will do all that Fritz
asks him."