But this tranquillity did not last long; for no sooner had John left the room, having shaken hands with Fritz and kissed Ella, than a kind of secondary excitement seemed to take possession of the children. Fritz first took off his own helmet, and then, while Ella was stooping down to unloosen her brown paper leggings, he snapped hers off also with a summary politeness which Ella seemed for a moment to resent; but Fritz had no time, evidently, to give to trifles. He laid both helmets on the foot of a couch which projected out into the window, and then he rapidly divested himself of his coat and his huge leather boots, winding up by planting Ella on the end of the sofa and tugging violently at her less cumbersome leggings, until the little girl descended suddenly upon her back on the floor.
This time a few tears evidently softened the heart of the warrior, for he stooped down, lifted Ella from the ground, and covered her face with kisses; and in a few minutes Violet saw them both emerge from their house hand-in-hand and cross over the street, and push through the gathering of people towards the door of her own house, which opened immediately beneath her window.
She felt rather sorry that Ella had come across with her brother, for she had something to say to Fritz, a question to ask him in secret about some subject which was troubling her, and which she felt she could only confide to him in private. But when the door of her room opened and Ella burst in all smiles and health and happiness, and rushed over to fling her dimpled arms round Violet's neck, she forgot for a time about her secret; and her spirits rose, and her white face broke into one of its sudden smiles, as she noticed scraps of cord and paper still sticking to Ella's fat legs which Fritz had evidently been too hurried to remove.
"What hast thou been doing all this morning, Ella?" she asked curiously; "and why has Fritz not been at school? I have seen him ever since I was dressed, playing in the window."
Ella's cheeks suddenly deepened to a purple red, and she gazed towards her brother with eyes which said plainly, "Thou must give an answer to this question."
"I have not been at school because—because, well, because I did not go; and besides I was busy doing lots of other things."
Ella's face looked decidedly relieved by this explanation of her brother's, which was entirely satisfactory to her own mind; but Violet was much puzzled by Fritz's words and still more perplexed by his manner, which was strange and quite unlike himself.
While she was pondering with herself what it all meant Ella broke in upon the silence.
"Yes, Fritz was doing lots of things all the morning—killing and cutting and stabbing the French, and he gave me an awful scrape on the arm; just look at it, Violet!" And Ella turned round the fattest of arms to Violet for compassionate inspection, across which just at the pink and dimpled elbow there certainly was a most undeniable and somewhat gory scratch.