"Yes, very busy crying," said Ella plaintively.
"And I am going to begin now and say my prayers," observed Fritz, whose eyes had suddenly rested on Violet's Bible lying on the table beside her bed. "Mother says Ella and I ought to pray every morning and every night for father to come home safe; and so I am going to begin to-night."
"And didst thou not always say thy prayers every morning and every night?" asked Aunt Lizzie in some surprise.
"Oh yes, I always say them," observed Fritz; "but I don't think about them; at least not much."
"He does not think about them one scrap," said Ella cheerfully; "he stares at the wall, and goes sound asleep; and sometimes he looks round at me, and begins to laugh; and sometimes he rattles his heels on the ground until mother comes up and smacks him."
Aunt Lizzie shook her head at this history; and Violet said in a very low voice,—
"O Fritz, is not Ella joking?"
"No," replied Fritz truthfully. "I don't much care for saying prayers. I like to ask God for things which I think he will give me, but it tires me to say the same thing so often. At least one month I used to pray every day for a lovely gray pony that was in the field, and I never got it. And, besides, every morning when I woke I used always to say to God, 'Good Lord God, make little Violet well;' and yet thou art still sick, and weaker and weaker. And then," continued Fritz, bending close down beside her, and speaking in a whisper, "once I prayed in the day, too, when I read that book about the little hunchback girl. I went straight home and asked God to give thee wings too; and yet thou hast never got them."
"Yes," said Ella in a very grave tone, having overheard the whisper, "he went straight home and locked the door, and would not let Ella in; and Ella banged and banged, and it was all no use. And then she put her eye to the keyhole, and Fritz was saying his prayers at the kitchen table; and Ella heard him say, 'Please, good Lord Jesus, put wings on Violet's hump, like the little girl in the story. Amen.'"