"Let me pass, if you please," she said nervously; "the child will be impatient if I delay."
"You are very kind to our Violet?" he said, moving a little aside. "She is happy?"
"Oh yes, happy enough; that is to say when she gets everything she wants. She is a trifle peevish sometimes, and hard to manage. But we are great friends."
"I fancied I had heard her crying this morning very early; was it not so?"
"Pah!" cried Evelina with a toss of her head, "one must not stand in the street and count every cry a sick child gives. The canary bird chattered so that she could not sleep, nor I either, so I threw a shawl over its head, and there was an end of the matter."
"So," said the policeman again, only this time more gravely, and allowed Evelina to go past him up the stairs.
Madam Adler did not lose a moment in hastening to come at Violet's call. She too had had a letter from her husband, and had only just read the first line; but she thrust it into her pocket and hurried across the street. Little Violet's trembling heart must first be quieted, and then when she was satisfied Madam Adler would return and read her own letter in the quiet of her room with many thanks to the good God who had spared her husband so far.
