"Pretty well, thank you," she replied, wondering at the interruption.
"Does she sleep? can she eat? is she heart-broken?" He spoke abruptly, and Lizzie noticed with surprise that his lip was trembling beneath his thick frizzled mustache.
"She is making a brave fight," replied she warmly; "but the worst is to come."
"Yes, that is it," he said quickly. "Once he is gone there will be no keeping her. She will fade away, poor little flower, and be no more seen. Good-morning. It is well for her to-day that she has one kind heart to fly to."
He touched his hat with military punctilio as he departed, but his eyes, which looked straight before him out into the street, were full of tears.
"How does he know about her?" thought Aunt Lizzie wonderingly as she went slowly up the stairs; "and what a soft heart he must have beneath that hard and battered exterior."
When she opened the door of Violet's room she found the child sitting up in her bed with her face flushed and her eyes unnaturally bright. She had her desk open on the counterpane beside her, and immediately in front of her, resting on her knees, was the piece of cake which yesterday she had refused to allow her father to cut.
Her aunt went over to the bedside with her bunch of deep purple violets and the blue forget-me-nots and laid them on the coverlet. As she did so, Violet looked up and said, rather wearily,—
"Aunt Lizzie, canst thou help me?"