Violet nodded her head. "Aunt Lizzie, what is Fritz shouting about over there at the window? and is not his father also going away to the war?"
"Yes, my child; and Fritz is screaming out that he will be a soldier too. He is a noisy lad, that Fritz."
"Violet wants to be a soldier too," said she in an almost inaudible voice; "but father is so long in coming, and Violet's heart goes so quick, Aunt Lizzie, and it makes her sick."
"Here, let me smooth thy hair." Her aunt stooped quickly and kissed the little white face. "Let me bathe thy face and put on a nice clean pinafore, and then thou wilt look so bright and fresh for father. And now try and drink this cup of milk. It will do thee good."
She offered the cup to her, but the child shook her head. "I could not drink it. All the morning something is in Violet's throat, just here, and she cannot make it go down."
"Well, we will not mind the milk." Aunt Lizzie put the cup on the table, and brushed out her long fair hair and tied it up with her purple ribbon. She bathed her face with warm water from the sauce-pan on the stove, and the pinafore was already half over her head, when the door opened and John came in.
"Aunt Lizzie, is it father? Tell him, tell him quickly," cried Violet in a sudden tremor. "Violet cannot be a soldier unless thou tellest him first what I said to thee."
Lizzie turned from the bed, leaving the pinafore still over the child's face. John was already half-way across the room, and there was such a look of questioning anguish in his gaze as it met hers that she could scarcely frame the words of poor Violet's request. She whispered, however, something in his ear, which after a second's thought he readily understood; and stepping over towards the bed, he waited until Lizzie drew the pinafore down from his little girl's face, gazing at her with the expression in his eyes of one who waits with a speechless pain and dread to look on the features of the dead.
But what was this! When the face was uncovered there was a smile, an actual smile on her lips, and one which grew with the mounting colour in her cheeks as she stretched up her arms quickly and said in a hurried whisper, "Father, Violet has been waiting for thee."