On Angels' Wings

by Mrs. Greene

"Not to stay—not to sleep? Thou wilt not say good-bye to-night?" cried Violet. "Dear father, not to-night!" Her appeal broke into one long, pitiful wail.

"No, no; not to-night. Oh, darling child, if Violet only knew how father's heart aches, she would not cry so. Try, sweetest darling, to be brave. Father will come back when he has reported himself to the captain, and Aunt Lizzie will stay with thee while he is away."

Violet ceased crying aloud, and lying back on her pillows, resorted to her old device of drawing the bedclothes over her face. John stooped down and kissed the little hand that grasped them so tightly; then saying a few words in a low voice to Aunt Lizzie, he went out of the room.

When he returned about two hours later, Violet was asleep. Her aunt had sat by her bed and sung to her, in a low, droning voice, little hymns and nursery songs familiar to her ears in the old mother days, until at last the sobbing ceased, the hand which held the sheet gradually relaxed, and the child slept.

Poor John! it was a relief to him to find all so quiet in the room when he came up. He had the bird-cage in his hand, which he hung up on a peg in the centre of the eight-sided alcove which formed the window, and which jutted out some distance over the street.

Then he drew a chair over into the alcove for Lizzie, and they sat down in the gloaming to talk over Violet and what was to be done to insure her happiness and comfort during the time he must be away at the war.

It was a long talk and a sad one, and to John, sitting there in the moonlit window, it seemed as if he were speaking in a dream to the poor little dead mother; for Aunt Lizzie listened with the same earnest sympathy, and when she replied it was in the same low tones. When she spoke, too, of the poor sick child lying now so quietly asleep on the bed in the corner, she used the very same expressions and endearing epithets of love, which came back to poor John's ears like whispers from the grave.

It was finally arranged between them that she was to remain with Violet for a few days after his departure, so as to allow the first burst of childish grief to pass over under her loving and watchful care. Then Aunt Lizzie had hoped that it might have been possible to have moved the poor little invalid to Gützberg, where she could have devoted herself to her charge, and she would have done so lovingly and faithfully. But John had already thought of this plan, and had consulted over it with the physician, a kind and clever man, who had known Violet from her birth; and he had decided against the plan, saying that any attempt to move the child from the room where she had lived all her little life would be almost certainly attended with fatal consequences. The shock of a removal, and the tearing up of the frail tendrils which held this little fading flower to life would cause it suddenly to wither away. "And besides," the doctor added kindly, "what should we all do here in Edelsheim without our little Violet? Why, you might almost as well take down the clock out of the old church tower and tell us still to know the time of day, as to take our Violet's face from the window and tell us all to live pure and patient lives. No, no, good man; leave us the child, and I for one will watch over her."

So John had returned home with sudden tears in his eyes, satisfied that the doctor was right. And Aunt Lizzie afterwards confirmed him regretfully in the same view; for she had said to Violet that afternoon, when she was lying on the bed beside her, "How would Violet like to leave Edelsheim for a little while, just while father is away, and to return with Aunt Lizzie to Gützberg? The little children at home would scream with joy to have Violet amongst them, and they would hold out their hands to welcome her."