"And by-and-by she will follow me to heaven. Is it not so, John? She will be glad to find me there."
"Yes, darling, yes. And now kiss thy little one, and I will carry her back to bed;" for the childish eyes were beginning to dilate with a strange terror, and Violet was shrinking nervously back against the wall.
"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye," cried the poor mother, clinging to the little white figure as John lifted her from the bed; "when Violet has wings she will fly to her dear mother in heaven, will she not?"
"Yes," replied Violet, her face brightening up with a broad, sweet smile as her father lifted her in his arms, and she leaned her cheek against his, "beautiful silver wings; but mother must not go to heaven to-night, for to-morrow Fritz is to bring me my cart, and mother has promised to put a cushion in it and wheel Violet round the room."
Her father carried her back to her bed and laid her down, oh, so softly and tenderly, and kissed her with a long kiss, longer than any he had ever given her before, and then he went back into the room and closed the door. Violet did not hear anything more. She looked for some time at the beautiful purple sky outside, filled with thousands of shining stars. She saw the roofs of the houses with their pointed gables; and on the top of the chimney opposite she could see the grave figure of a stork standing upright in the starlight beside its nest. She felt sad at first and trembled a little, she did not know why. For why had her mother called her in the middle of the night and said good-bye to her? Where was she going? She had never gone away anywhere from her before, and to-morrow she had promised to give her that ride in Fritz's cart, and to tell her again that story about the cruel tailor who ran his needle into the elephant's trunk; and Violet smiled and forgot her troubles as she remembered how the elephant filled his great trunk at the gutter and splashed it all over the tailor as he sat cross-legged at his work in the open window; and soon, her mind growing more composed, and somewhat tangled with sleep, she thought she heard the tailor crying somewhere outside in the street. She did not like to hear him sobbing; and every time she looked up, the elephant was still shooting up water into the air; but the bright drops which she saw were the stars still twinkling on the dark back-ground of the sky, and the sobbing came from the next room, where her father was kneeling brokenhearted by the bedside on which her little mother lay dead.
CHAPTER III. A SAD DISCOVERY.
It was not for many days that Violet understood that her mother was really dead; perhaps, indeed, she did not quite understand it for many months to come. It seemed so strange to her that in the morning when she opened her eyes her father was boiling the kettle on the stove, and arranging the little wooden tray, which was always laid on her bed, with her morning meal, hot and tempting, placed upon it. It was he, too, who, lifting her gently up, placed the pillows behind her poor tired shoulders, and propped up her back so that she could sit forward and eat her egg and the sweet rolls which the baker sent across the street every day, fresh and smoking, for her breakfast.
"Where is mother?" she asked each morning with a little sorrowful smile; for her father was so good and kind, and he sat so patiently beside her bed, and buttered the bread with such care that she did not want to cry or sob, though there was such a lump in her throat that she could not swallow what he gave her. "Where is mother, dear father? She did not come to see me all yesterday."