As Mrs. Schroder leaned back in her chair after her morning’s labor, the door opened, and a young girl came into the room.  She had a fresh, bright face, a brown complexion, a full, round figure.  She came in quickly, nodded cheerily to Mrs. Schroder, and knelt down in front of the fire to warm her hands.

“I did want to come in this morning,” she said,—­“the very last day!  I should have liked to help you about Ernest’s things.  But Aunt Martha must needs have a supernumerary wash, and I have just 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.