CHAPTER VII. FRITZ AND ELLA.
The next day there seemed little if any diminution of the excitement. The crowd was not quite so dense; but ordinary business appeared for the time almost suspended. People were rushing up and down the street with slips of paper in their hands on which were printed the latest telegrams; and persons who were usually engrossed with their work in the early hours of the day were standing at the doors of their shops and houses discussing the great news of impending war, news which gathered with every hour fresh confirmation.
Violet, of course, seated as usual in her chair in the window, could not but notice the bustle and the stir beneath; but it did not frighten or distress her, for her father had brought his work up to her room quite early this morning, and when he was near her she always reposed on his strength and courage in place of her own.
But John was both distressed and disturbed; and presently seeing that Violet's hair was a little blown about by the wind, he made it a pretext for closing over the casement, so that she might not hear what the people were talking about so earnestly in the street underneath; and for a time his efforts were successful.
It was only as the day wore on and it came near the time when he had to go to the store for orders that she grew restless, and the anxious pleading look came into her eyes which he never could bear to see, and which to-day he felt less able than ever to withstand.
"I shall not be long away, darling," he said softly as he gathered up his tools and laid them on the broad window-sill beside her. "See, I am not taking away my work materials, and I shall be back almost before thou thinkest that I am gone. I will send Kate to sit with thee, and thou canst teach her how to paint the ducks for the magnet-box, only this time I would not give them scarlet wings; black, I think, would be better."
Violet smiled at the idea of Kate's trying to paint the ducks—Kate, who was so blind that she could not see a cockroach creeping across the kitchen floor, and the length of whose nails would sadly interfere with her holding the paint-brush.