On Angels' Wings

by Mrs. Greene

Ella, like her brother, was the very personification of rude health. She had rosy cheeks, curly fair hair which hung over her shoulders, dimpled hands, and great sturdy legs. She was simply Fritz's shadow. He exercised the same curious influence over her which he did over Violet. When Fritz galloped up and down the street, sword in hand, threatening death to every Frenchman who ever breathed, Ella was sure to be following behind him as fast as her fat legs would allow, imitating his every word and gesture. When Fritz fell unexpectedly into the gutter, Ella was certain to fall on the top of him; when Fritz sat in his little wooden cart drawn by Nero, the great black Newfoundland, and rushed down the cobbled hill at full speed, Ella was invariably beside him, with her fair hair floating out behind her in a yellow halo, and her fat legs propped on the little wooden board in front of her.

If there was one thing more than another that Violet longed to be able to do, it was to drive in this cart. When she saw the wooden box flying down the street past the window, with the children seated in it, her heart gave great leaps of excitement, and she leaned almost dangerously forward in her chair to see them reach the foot of the hill. But the coming home was somewhat more tedious. Nero was very good at galloping down hill, but exceedingly bad about coming up it again. Fritz generally urged him forward on these occasions by stout tugs at his tail and fearful guttural sounds, in which Ella joined until her very cheeks grew purple; but Nero had evidently not a sensitive tail, and when toiling up the hill he seemed also to grow quite deaf.

It tired Violet to watch them returning; for when she heard Fritz's excited adjurations, and saw Ella's cheeks blown out like a roasted apple, she felt somehow as if she were drawing the carriage up the hill herself; and her shoulders used to ache so that she had to give up looking out of the window, and lean back in her chair.

Violet had a little basket fastened to a cord, which she could let down into the street from her window, and into which the children and the neighbours were in the habit of putting little presents. The baker's wife, Fritz's mother, often ran across the street and put in gingerbread cakes, still warm from the oven. The confectioner's boy, too, as he went by with his loaded tray of dainties, had a commission from his master to drop a package of sugar almonds or other sweets into the little wicker-work basket. Fritz, also, who was ingenious, had contrived an arrangement by which a little bell could be rung from the street up into her little turret-window whenever there was a gift waiting below for her in the street. But Fritz was also exceedingly mischievous; and one day, when he had rung the bell somewhat violently, and Violet had let down her small basket, she had found inside when she opened it only a large yellow frog squatting on a vine leaf, which immediately leaped out, first on her purple dress, and then upon the floor, where the cat pounced on it, and Violet's screams rang through the house. But Fritz had already reached the door, and the frog was carried off in his red pocket-handkerchief, and replaced among the cabbages in the back garden.

After this she always opened her basket cautiously, especially when the bell was rung with unusual violence. And on one occasion, observing the legs of a cockroach issuing from the wicker sides of the basket, she opened the lid with special care, and seeing its contents, she turned the basket upside down, and shook everything quickly into the street beneath. The punishment was complete; for Fritz, who was standing directly underneath and gaping upwards, received a perfect shower of cockroaches on his face; and little Ella, also, who was smilingly gazing up at the window, had to rush into the shop opposite, to her mother, to have some of the struggling black creatures released from her web of yellow hair.

This was one of the occasions on which Violet had really laughed. It would have been impossible not to do so, as the mirth which rose up from the street beneath was infectious to the last degree. Fritz's father, standing at his door, and over whose head clouds of steam were issuing from the bakery beyond, laughed at his son's discomfiture till the tears ran down his cheeks; and even the grim policeman walked out into the middle of the street, partly to avoid the black insects which were swarming on the narrow pavement beneath, and partly to catch a sight of little Violet's face. He had heard her laugh, and it had sounded like music in his ears; but now, as she glanced out quickly, he walked on again with a steady tread and a face like iron. His sword clanked against the pavement, and the spike on his helmet shone severely bright, and none could guess, as he passed them, that the heart so tightly fastened up within his blue uniform was soft as the baker's dough in the shop beside him, or that his eyes were blinded at this very moment with sudden tears.

There were occasions when even he had placed gifts in the basket;—little toys which other hands had played with; story books which other eyes had feasted on greedily, and on whose pages were the marks of the little fingers which had held them once, so tightly and eagerly grasped; and occasionally a bundle of snowdrops had been dropped in hastily, whose stalks had been rolled in damp moss to keep them fresh till the morning, for he always placed his gifts in the basket at night-time. He rang no bell; no eye saw him. He did not call out to the little figure seated in the window above, with the shaded lamp burning on the table beside her; he asked for no thanks, but passed on with the same official tread, the same clanking sword, and the same ache for ever at his heart.

Violet never knew who it was that placed these presents in her basket. She often asked Fritz if he could guess; but though he did guess the butcher, the chestnut-seller, and the lamplighter, simply because they had children, he never thought of the grave policeman, who so often, as he walked past, threatened to put him in prison.

Violet treasured these gifts more than all her other presents. She felt, by a kind of instinct, that there was some story connected with them. On the fly-leaf of one book she had read with a sudden sting of strongest pain these words,—"For my own sick girlie, from her little mother."