The mother at once replied that she would beg for such a permission another year. For the present, they had to be resigned to this separation which she herself was dreading, too.
Little Hun alone was more immediately concerned with the present than with the unknown future and remained content. Pulling Dora's apron, he kept begging, "Please get your book for me, Dora. I want to write now."
The girl went to the house to fetch her album and asked all her dear friends to write a little verse in it for her, according to the good old custom. Her album looked far from elegant. It was very old, the pages were yellowed by age and the ink was faded. Here and there little bunches of discolored flowers, with hardly any petals, were pasted in. All the songs and verses were written by a child's hand, having belonged to Dora's mother in her youth. Several funny little drawings enlivened the pages, and one of a little house and a tiny man near a fountain especially attracted Hun's attention.
After turning several more pages, he said with a knowing air, "Mamma has that, too!"
Then pulling out a narrow slip of paper, he declared, "This belongs to Lili, whom I have to bring back from America."
Jul burst out laughing. "What wonderful tales are you inventing for Dora now, young Hun?"
The mother, after a rapid glance at her youngest child, looked at the paper. Suddenly tears rushed to her eyes, and dear old memories of past days rose vividly before her, especially the merry face of her beloved Lili. She was completely overcome, for it brought back all her childhood days, the image of her own sweet mother, long years ago laid in the grave, and all the vanished years of her youth, gone so irrevocably.
As soon as she saw the paper, she recognized it as the second half of the little verse she and Lili had composed together. Unable to read aloud from sheer emotion, she handed to her husband the paper joined to her own half, which she drew out of the notebook where she had kept it, ever since it had been found a few weeks before. The children whispered to each other and with suspense, watched their father as he joined the two slips of yellowish gray paper, which together formed a sheet of writing paper of the usual size. They were written by the same childish hand, and the sense was now quite clear.
After looking the sheet over a little, the father read aloud as follows:
"Our hands lay clasped
In firmest tie,
We hoped together,
To live and to die.
But one has to stay,
The other must go.
Our hearts are heavy
With mutual woe.
We cut apart
This tiny song
And hope to join it
Before very long.
Once more united
Joyfully we'll cry:
'We can live again
In close friendship's tie.
We'll never take leave of each other again
And ne'ermore endure such deep, bitter pain.'"