"There; far away, over the roofs and over the steeple, high, high; ever so high up, up, till at last she was with God."
"And who was she? what was her name?" questioned Fritz.
"I do not know," said Violet, shaking her head. "But, Fritz, I was wondering. I was thinking all last night that perhaps it was the same little sick girl who had the book. Thou rememberest, dost thou not? It came in the basket too."
"What book?"
"About the little hunchback," said Violet in a whisper.
"Oh!" cried Fritz, with quite a visible start; "yes; of course I remember the fairy-tale book. We thought at first it was the girl with the oranges; but she cannot be in heaven, because I saw her to-day."
"No, not a bit of that girl is in heaven," cried Ella joyously. "Fritz and I saw her to-day. Fritz climbed up the steps, and gave her hair a chuck; and she jumped round so fast that she fell over, and bumped down every step—bump, bump, bump—and all the oranges galloped after her. When she got to the bottom," screamed Ella, "she was sitting in the middle of her own basket, and her heels up in the air—so;" and Ella plumped down on her back on the floor, and elevated two of the stoutest legs imaginable.
"She bellowed after us that she would call the police," cried Fritz, continuing the story with much zest; "but I screamed back to her that the police would put her in prison for sticking pins in her oranges and sucking them, as I have seen her do hundreds of times. Then she flew into a worse rage, and said that she would run home and tell her father. So Ella and I laughed, for she would have a long way to run to tell her father—would she not, Violet?"
"Yes," she said quickly; but the smile which had risen at the children's story suddenly died out from her lips.