ust come in from
hanging the last of the clothes upon the line."

"It is very good of you, Violet," answered Mrs. Schroder, "but I was
glad to-day to have plenty to do. It is the thinking that troubles me.
My boys are grown up into men, and Ernest is going! It is our first
parting. To-day I would rather work than think."

Violet was the young girl's name. A stranger might think that the name
did not suit her. In her manner was nothing of the shrinking nature that
is a characteristic of the violet. Timidity and reserve she probably did
have somewhere in her heart,--as all women do,--but it had never been
her part to play them out. She had all her life been called upon to show
only energy, activity, and self-reliance. She was an only child, and
had been obliged to be son and daughter, brother and sister in one. Her
father was the owner of the house in which were the rooms occupied by
Mrs. Schroder and her sons. The little shop on the lower floor was his
place of business. He was a watchmaker, had a few clocks on the shelves
of his small establishment, and a limited display of jewelry in the
window, together with a supply of watch-keys, and minute-hands and
hour-hands for decayed watches. For though his sign proclaimed him a
watchmaker, his occupation perforce was rather that of repairing and
cleaning watches and clocks than in the higher branch of creation.

Violet's childhood was happy enough. She was left in unrestrained
liberty outside of the little back-parlor, where her Aunt Martha
held sway. Out of school-hours, her joy and delight were to join the
school-boys in their wildest plays. She climbed fences, raced up and
down alley-ways, stormed inoffensive door-yards, chased wandering
cats with the best of them. She was a favorite champion among the
boys,--placed at difficult points of espionage, whether it were over
beast, man, woman, or boy. She was proud of mounting some imaginary
rampart, or defending some dangerous position. Sometimes a taunt was
hurled from the enemy upon her allies for associating with a "girl;" but
it always received a contemptuous answer,--"You'd better look out, she
could lick any one of you!" And at the reply, Violet would look down
from her post on the picketed fence, shake her long curls triumphantly,
and climb to some place inaccessible to the enemy, to show how useful
her agility could be to her own party.

The time of sorrow came at twilight, when the boys separated for their
homes,-