This brilliant sally was suggested by the descent of one of Violet's newly-painted animals upon Fritz's head from the window-ledge above.
"I would not swallow a camel—I am not a thrush," still sobbed Ella, hiding her face against Violet's chair.
"Well, well, what does it signify? stop crying," cried Fritz, making an effort over himself to recover his usual gallantry. "Come along, let's have some fun.—May we take down all those old beasts overhead and have a game with them?—may we, Violet? We have not played at crossing the desert for ages."
"Yes, yes; only take care. Some of them are quite sticky, and one or two have broken legs; but there are lots of other animals in the Noah's ark in the corner."
"All right; now we shall have real good fun," cried Fritz, tugging Ella's lingering arm from the rungs of Violet's chair with reassuring roughness and making room for her on the bench beside him. "Now, thou shalt be Noah, and Violet shall be Aaron, and I will be Moses with the rod."
"What rod?" asked Ella, gazing up at her brother rather doubtfully with eyes all wet and smudged with tears, while she wriggled herself into a more comfortable position on the carpenter's hard bench beside him.
"Oh, not the rod thou meanest," he replied reassuringly as he emptied out pell-mell a whole box full of animals upon the table—cows, sheep, ducks, elephants, and canary birds, all heaped up in a mound of wild confusion.
Ella had by this time her yellow curly head pillowed confidingly against Fritz's left shoulder, and perfect harmony was restored between them. Violet was now the most silent of the three. For some minutes past she had seemed in a reverie, and occasionally she looked anxiously across at Fritz, as if longing but fearing to ask him some question.
Whether he was aware of these longing, sorrowful glances directed towards him, it was impossible to tell. One might perhaps have thought so from the way he rambled on in a foolish, disconnected style, while he ranged the animals two by two along the edge of the table, and elicited shrieks of laughter from Ella by making the broken-legged elephant sit on its tail, while the no-legged goose was given a lift across the desert, seated between the horns of a scarlet cow.
At last they were all arranged in order, from the elephant down to the little red spotted lady-bird, which was fully as large as the mouse some distance in front of it; and Ella was desired to keep her feet and arms under the table, as every time she stretched them out she was certain to overturn a whole cavalcade of animals.