"From that day forth Lili and I were inseparable friends, and a rich and happy life was opened to me in her lovely home, such as I had never known nor thought of. I shall never forget the delightful, untroubled days which I spent in that beautiful house. I was almost as much loved and petted as if I had been Lili's own sister. Her parents had come from North Germany. Her father had been induced to buy the factory by the advice of an acquaintance, and they expected to remain permanently in our neighborhood. Lili was an only child, and having been hitherto without companionship of her own age, she clung to me very closely, and I returned her affection with equal fervor. "What good, kind people her parents were! They asked as a great favor that I might make long visits at their house, and my parents allowed me to pass weeks at a time with my newly found friends. Those visits seemed to me like prolonged festivals. Such lovely toys and playthings as Lili had! I had never even dreamed of anything like them. I shall never forget the innumerable figures cut from fashion plates which we used for paper dolls! We each had a large family of them, with all their kindred and relatives, each one fitted with a name, a character and a story of its own. We almost, nay quite, lived in their imaginary lives, and we shared their joys and sorrows as if they had been real. "I always returned home laden with gifts, and I was scarcely settled there, when new requests came that I would repeat the visit. When we were a little older we had lessons together, both from a regular teacher and from my father, and when we began to read together, the heroes and heroines of our books were as real to us as our dolls had been, and we lived over their lives and histories again and again. What life and energy Lili had; what freshness and vivacity; my charming Lili, with her flowing brown curls and her laughing eyes! "So the years passed, and no thought of coming sorrow and separation crossed our young lives, until one day, when we were nearly twelve years old, my father told me--I remember the very spot in the garden where we were standing at that moment--that Mr. Blank, Lili's father, was about to give up his factory and return to Germany. As I understood, Mr. Blank had been deceived from the very beginning; the business was not in the prosperous condition that had been represented to him, and now he was obliged to give it up, to his great loss. My father was very much disturbed, and he declared that Mr. Blank had been very badly treated, and was consequently ruined.