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."  
[Pg 137]
 
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[Pg 138] 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.
 
[Pg 139]
 
"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.
 
&qu............