"Fairy tales? but are fairy tales never true?"
"No; at least none that I ever read."
"But God, and the angels, and heaven are all in that book, and they are true; and the little sick hunchback, that is not a fairy tale, for I am sick just like her; and why—why must that one little bit be untrue? And besides," sobbed Violet, whose whole courage and hope seemed almost to have forsaken her,—"besides, the words under that picture are in the Bible. I found them in mother's own Bible: 'No more tears.'" As she lifted up her face to Fritz for some hope, some consolation, immense tears were running down her cheeks, and the boy felt a tightening in his own throat too.
"What does it matter?" he said as he pushed the spotted book away from her; "I will throw this old thing out of the window if it makes thee cry. Thou dost not want wings; thou art the best little angel in all Edelsheim: and, besides, flies have wings, and they are horrid beasts; and so why need one care?" and he threw his arms round her neck, and kissed her wet face, and whispered every loving name he could think of into her ear.
CHAPTER VIII. A BITTER CRY.
The next few days were so full of a new excitement for Violet that she scarcely had time to think of the little hunchback, or of the shock her feelings had received from Fritz's words.
All day long she sat in the window, absorbed in watching what was going on in the street beneath. Regiments of soldiers were constantly marching past, bands were playing, and flags flying from many of the opposite windows. Great forage-carts toiled up the hill, driven by soldiers; and Uhlans were for ever dashing up and down the street on their great tall horses, so that the points of their lances often seemed to come up to the very window at which she sat.