Fritz for a long time had been making signals to Violet from the high-up dormer window of the house; but her face had been turned away, and though her eyes were fixed on the far-off hill, she saw nothing but a waving meadow bright with flowers, over whose green fragrant grass she was passing with a delicious freedom, her feet not actually touching the ground, only here and there skimming over the cool meadow grass, while a refreshing air wafted her along without fatigue and without pain.
She often had this fancy now, that she was floating along over the earth, that she was free from the ache in her back and the weary heaviness of her limbs; and this afternoon she was listening again to that voice from the meadow saying, "I am going to lay this poor tired lamb in its mother's bosom."
But all at once, when she was seeking once more to see the face of the child which the Lord Jesus held so lovingly in his arms, the basket-bell rang with a sharp tinkle overhead, and she awoke from her dream to find herself no longer wandering amid green pastures, but propped up among her pillows, oh so tired, and with a sudden tearful longing to lay her head against some loving heart and be at rest.
At the sound of the bell, Evelina, who had been dozing also in a chair near the stove, started up angrily, and going over to the window, looked down into the street.
"Ha! it is just as I thought, thou little donkey. Hast thou no sense, Master Fritz, but to go and ring bells in people's ears when they are asleep? See, now, thou hast startled Violet out of her dreams, and she will be ill all the night."
"No, no," said Violet eagerly; but there were sudden tears of distress and weakness standing in her uplifted eyes.
"Look in the basket, Violet," cried Fritz, taking no notice of Evelina's wrath; "there is something in it that I want thee to see, and it is all—" Before, however, Fritz could finish his sentence, his mother had appeared in the doorway, and seizing Fritz by the collar of his coat, had dragged him backwards into the bakery.
"I will not have thee disturbing Violet with thy folly," she said angrily, and pushed him into the back passage.
Meantime Evelina, her own curiosity aroused, had drawn up the little cord from which dangled the basket.
"It is uncommonly light," she said, as she lifted it in at the window. "It strikes me, if I am not mistaken, that Master Fritz is at his old pranks again. Yes, it is just as I thought; the basket is quite empty. It is just a silly trick he has played upon thee, and nothing else." Evelina turned the basket upside down as she spoke, and shook out some old dried moss and withered leaves, and a little scrap of dirty paper folded into a minute size, which fluttered down and lit on the window-seat beside Violet.