"I would rather have Fritz to sit with me," she said plaintively.
"Fritz! ah, well; but is not this the time for his school?"
"He has not been at school all to-day. I have seen him ever so often at the window. See, father, he is there now; and oh! only look what a dress he has got on."
She burst out laughing, and even John with his heavy heart could not repress a smile, for there at the window opposite stood Fritz with an enormous spiked helmet on his head; a huge military coat buttoned across his chest, which covered his whole body; and a pair of riding-boots on his legs, which evidently encumbered him a good deal, for just at this moment, while John and Violet were gazing at him, he made a sudden rush at some unseen enemy beside the curtain, and one of the boots doubling up at the ankle he fell waddling on the floor, his helmet tumbling off his head and going almost out of the window, while all his efforts to get up again, even with the assistance of fat Ella, who tugged at him with all her might and main, were fruitless.
Again Violet burst out into one of those rare fits of real childlike laughter which always delighted and refreshed poor John's heart; but to-day, though he smiled somewhat grimly, he turned away quickly to the door, saying as he went: "I shall see about Fritz coming to sit with thee; but if his mother will not permit it thou must be content for awhile with Kate."
"Yes, yes," cried Violet after him; "but do, please, send Fritz here. I have something so particular to ask him."
She watched her father as he crossed over the street to the baker's. He was such a great tall man that he had generally to stoop as he went in at the doorway; but to-day Madam Adler met him at the entrance to the bakery, and they held what seemed to the watcher at the window upstairs a very lengthy conversation. Madam Adler, who was a round fat little body, gesticulating somewhat wildly, pointed first up the street and then down it, and clutched every now and then at her cap, which was hanging half off the back of her head, while she gazed up at the great tall man beside her, whose grave eyes were fixed intently upon her face, and who listened earnestly while she poured forth a torrent of words, not one of which Violet could hear from the buzz and noise in the street beneath.
Fritz, who had regained his legs by this time, was now standing in the window opposite, making frantic signs across to Violet, who at first remained quite unconscious of his efforts; but presently looking up she saw him waving a sword furiously across the street to attract her attention; and seeing now he had secured it, he proceeded to make a sudden lunge at Ella, digging the weapon apparently deep into the very middle of her body. Ella immediately collapsed on the floor, and Fritz continued for some time to prod her violently. Violet screamed and turned away her head; but when she looked round again, Ella, with an enormous brown paper helmet on her head, was standing beside Fritz in the very middle of the window grinning from ear to ear, while her assailant, still martially attired in the old trailing coat, and with a face flushed with victory, had his arm thrown affectionately round her neck.
By-and-by, as Violet still gazed across and smiled more and more at Fritz's excited movements, she saw her father enter the room opposite. He sat down in a chair a little distance from the window and called Fritz over to him, and a conversation ensued apparently of some interest, as Fritz never lifted his eyes from John's face while he was speaking to him, and Ella's countenance also assumed a kind of rigid stolidity most unnatural to it.