He bent stiffly to gather up his slippers and fallen staff; and meanwhile
Pansie had heard the tumult of her great-grandfather's descent, and was
pounding against the door of the breakfast-room in her haste to come at
him. The Doctor opened it, and there she stood, a rather pale and large-
eyed little thing, quaint in her aspect, as might well be the case with a
motherless child, dwelling in an uncheerful house, with no other playmates
than a decrepit old man and a kitten, and no better atmosphere within-
doors than the odor of decayed apothecary's stuff, nor gayer neighborhood
than that of the adjacent burial-ground, where all her relatives, from her
great-grandmother downward, lay calling to her, "Pansie, Pansie, it is
bedtime!" even in the prime of the summer morning. For those dead women-
folk, especially her mother and the whole row of maiden aunts and grand-
aunts, could not but be anxious about the child, knowing that little
Pansie would be far safer under a tuft of dandelions than if left alone,
as she soon must be, in this difficult and deceitful world.

Yet, in spite of the lack of damask roses in her cheeks, she seemed a
healthy child, and certainly showed great capacity of energetic movement
in the impulsive capers with which she welcomed her venerable progenitor.
She shouted out her satisfaction, moreover (as her custom was, having
never had any oversensitive auditors about her to tame down her voice),
till even the Doctor's dull ears were full of the clamor.

"Pansie, darling," said Dr. Dolliver, cheerily, patting her brown hair
with his tremulous fingers, "thou hast put some of thine own friskiness
into poor old grandfather, this fine morning! Dost know, child, that he
came near breaking his neck down-stairs at the sound of thy voice? What
wouldst thou have done then, little Pansie?"