Reading the Letter. Page 163.
She drew her chair beside the bed, and having kissed the little white face with its ardent, loving eyes, she took the letter from Violet's hand and read it out to her slowly. It was just such a letter as she had expected it would be—overflowing with love, and with almost no allusion to the war or its horrors, but giving accounts of their camp-life,—the bivouacs under the trees, the fires lighted on the grass, and the large camp-kettles swung upon poles over the blazing logs; and of the little children who came out of the villages and stole through the woods to stare at them; and of one little maiden who had made so bold as to come and sit on John's knee, and had stroked his beard and chatted to him in French, and finally had kissed him ere she went away. Sometimes they slept on the ground with nothing but the bright stars overhead, and sometimes they made houses of leaves and boughs, into which they crept at night, and were as comfortable as could be.
But the chief part of the letter was taken up with home affairs. John wanted to know all about his Violet;—whether she was happy; what she did all day; whether she went out to drive in her carriage; if Fritz took good care of her, if Madam Adler came often to see her. Had the good doctor been to pay her a visit; was the canary well; did the poor back ache much? And inside the envelope, folded up carefully in a small piece of tissue-paper, were some wild flowers gathered from under the trees where they had bivouacked the night before. Violet could put them into mother's Bible. The flowers which she had given him were quite safe. He kept them always in a little package near his heart, and he loved to think of the words which Violet had printed for him—"To meet again."
It is needless to say that Violet's eyes were full before this letter was ended, and Madam Adler had to speak quickly of the one which she must write to him in answer, and of all the news she would have to tell him—about her watch, and about the doctor's visit, and how Ella's front tooth had fallen out, and she could no longer eat the hard ginger-bread nuts in the bakery.
Madam Adler promised to come over the next day to help her to write this letter, and having placed her mother's Bible on the bed beside her, she returned with an anxious heart to her own house to finish the closely-written page which lay hidden away in her pocket.
CHAPTER XVII. THE KIND PHYSICIAN.
The next morning Violet waited with some impatience for the time to arrive at which Madam Adler had promised to come and help her to write her letter. She made Evelina put her desk upon the bed, and her mother's Bible; and she had on a snowy clean pinafore and a fresh purple bow tying up her hair.
Evelina looked very white this morning, and often when the child spoke to her she did not answer her. She went in and out of the room perpetually, and once or twice Violet heard her chattering in the street below in a low, excited voice; and when she did return, she did not look at Violet at all, but walked to the window and stared across at the house opposite.