CHAPTER XVIII. SORROWFUL TIDINGS.
The next morning the doctor came early, and, true to his promise, acted as scribe for Violet. Such a long letter as was despatched to poor John, full of all the little scraps of news that Violet had been treasuring up for ever so long, and a few leaves of the ivy which grew up the side of the house and in at the window where she generally sat, and one yellow feather which had dropped out of the canary bird's wing. Violet felt quite elated when the letter was finished, and the doctor himself carried it off to the post, leaving her smiling, with eyes bright with pleasure and cheeks just a little flushed by the unusual exertion.
When the doctor was gone she insisted on being lifted up and placed as usual in the window. Evelina was surprised at the energy she showed in all her movements, and the weary time of her dressing went on with fewer sighs than usual.
It was not until she was actually seated in her old chair in the embrasure that she seemed for the first time to realize the terrible trouble that had come upon her friends in the house opposite. She had been so busy thinking of her father and of the letter which was to go to him, that she had not taken in all the sorrow that had fallen on the town and its inhabitants; but she could not sit long at the window this morning and not see or hear something of it. It seemed to her, after a little time, that all the people in Edelsheim were weeping.
There were women standing at Madam Adler's door wringing their hands, and others with aprons to their eyes sobbing. Many of them had slips of paper in their hands which they gazed at every moment, and then burst out crying afresh. Even the policeman, as he passed down the street opposite, had tears in his eyes, and as he tried to smile up at her window Violet saw how they fell on the breast of his coat.
"What are they all crying for in the street below?" she asked plaintively, as Evelina came out of the inner room and sat down in the window seat opposite her: "is Fritz's father so very, very ill, or what is it?"
"It is not only for him they are weeping, poor creatures," cried Evelina, gazing earnestly after the policeman, who was slowly pacing down the street with his head bent upon his chest. "They have all suffered, poor souls. There is not one in Edelsheim that has not lost a friend, or a brother, a father, or a husband, or a lover. The regiment was in the very front of the battle, and the men were mowed down like grass; at least so the paper says."