“Mamma, I wish I never need touch the piano again; it will be terribly tiresome without Dora, and Miss Hanenwinkel will find fault again and say I am ‘not progressing,’ and I don’t want to ‘progress’ when Dora is not here!”

“Oh dear!” sighed Jule, “what terrible days are before us, with danger to life and limb, when the twins begin again to find their time hang heavy on their hands.  It is a very stupid arrangement anyway,” he went on quite excitedly; “it would be far better for Dora to pass the winter with us.  Her aunt and uncle could go on in their quiet way in Karlsruhe all the same without her.”

The mother sympathized entirely in the children’s regret at the separation and said she hoped to persuade Mr. Ehrenreich to bring his wife and Dora back for another summer.

Hunne was the only one more interested in the present than in the future, and he kept pulling Dora’s dress and saying,

“Go get your book, Dora! get the book!”

So Dora went to get her album, and brought it over for each one of her friends, in the good old fashion, to write a verse or a motto in it, by way of remembrance.  It was no new, elegant, gilded affair.  It was an old book, faded and worn, and much of the writing in it was pale with age.  Here and there had been pasted on, tiny bunches of flowers and leaves all of which had lost their color, and many of which had fallen off.  The album had belonged to Dora’s mother, and the verses were all written in unformed, childish characters.  There were also some drawings, and among these one of a small house and a well, with a man standing near it, particularly attracted Hunne’s attention, and he took the book in his own hands, and began turning the leaves.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed with a knowing look, as he took out a piece of paper that lay folded between the leaves; “Mamma has one like this; it belongs to Lili; the one I am going to America to find.”

Julius laughed aloud.  “What in the world are you chattering to Dora about now, Hunne?” But his mother glanced, quickly at the little boy as she caught his words, took the paper from his hand and read what was written there.

Great tears fell from her eyes as she read; the memory of long past hours of her happy childhood rose before her, clear and distinct, and almost overpowered her, Her own mother’s face, and all the sights and sounds of childhood!  It was the other half of her own poem that she held in her hand, the half that had been kept by her dearly loved friend.  She gave it silently to her husband; she could not trust her voice to read it aloud.

The children watched her curiously as she took the other half from her notebook, and laid the two bits of yellow faded paper side by side.  They made a sheet of the usual size of old-fashioned letter paper.  The writing was the same on both, and as the lines were joined, their meaning became plain.  Mr. Birkenfeld read the verses aloud: