“Give _me_ but Something whereunto I may bind my heart— Something to love, to rest upon, to clasp Affection’s tendrils round!” She did not laugh, I say, for sorrow was in her heart, the first deep sorrow she had ever known. Hugh was going away—and how much better she liked him than all other boys she had ever known in her life! But the rose-bud was not all the contents of the box; there was beside it a magnificent sheet of blue paper, gilt edged, and “superfine,” and on it Hugh had copied the “Parting Song,” by Mrs. Hemans; and perhaps, good reader, though you be not fresh from Yankee land, you may guess how the child’s heart beat faster than ever it had before, as she read the words— When will you think of me, dear Grace? When will you think of me? When the last red light, the farewell of day, From the rock and the river is passing away, When the air with a deep’ning hush is fraught, And the heart goes burdened with tender thought? Then let it be! When will you think of me, sweet Grace? When will you think of me? When the rose of the rich midsummer time Is filled with the hues of its glorious prime, When ye gather its bloom, as in bright hours fled, From the walks where my footsteps no more may tread; Then let it be! Thus let my memory be with you, Grace— Thus ever think of me! Kindly, and gently, but as of one For whom ’tis well to be fled and gone; As of a bird from a chain unbound, As of a wanderer whose home is found; So let it be! And what had Grace to give to Hugh? What had she among her few treasured possessions a _boy_ would care for? The dolls maimed for life—the broken china—the picture-books—the bits of lace and ribbons, what were they to him? Grace never realized her poverty before that day—and then the very thought was humiliating. If she could only buy a knife, or a pocket-book, or a pencil-case; but the child had no purse, and, unfortunately, no money either, so that thought was speedily abandoned. It grew quite dark while she stood in her little room, still before the opened drawer which held all her keepsakes and treasures, but no good fairy was nigh at hand to lay before her the thing she wished, and at last, quite in despair, she went and stood by the parlor window, and lo, there was Hugh already passing by, whistling, and looking for all the world as though the inmates of that particular house were nothing in the least to him. In a few moments, side by side, the boy and girl were walking in the garden. “I have read your note, Hugh,” said Grace, for the “shades of evening” creeping over them, gave her a wonderful and unnatural boldness to speak, “but what shall I give you for a keepsake? I haven’t a book in the world _you_ would give a fig for.”