an end of her bread and milk with entire satisfaction, and afterwards
nibbled a crust, greatly enjoying its resistance to her little white
teeth.

How this child came by the odd name of Pansie, and whether it was really
her baptismal name, I have not ascertained. More probably it was one of
those pet appellations that grow out of a child's character, or out of
some keen thrill of affection in the parents, an unsought-for and
unconscious felicity, a kind of revelation, teaching them the true name by
which the child's guardian angel would know it,--a name with playfulness
and love in it, that we often observe to supersede, in the practice of
those who love the child best, the name that they carefully selected, and
caused the clergyman to plaster indelibly on the poor little forehead at
the font,--the love-name, whereby, if the child lives, the parents know
it in their hearts, or by which, if it dies, God seems to have called it
away, leaving the sound lingering faintly and sweetly through the house.
In Pansie's case, it may have been a certain pensiveness which was
sometimes seen under her childish frolic, and so translated itself into
French (_pensee_), her mother having been of Acadian kin; or, quite
as probably, it alluded merely to the color of her eyes, which, in some
lights, were very like the dark petals of a tuft of pansies in the
Doctor's garden. It might well be, indeed, on account of the suggested
pensiveness; for the child's gayety had no example to sustain it, no
sympathy of other children or grown people,--and her melancholy, had it
been so dark a feeling, was but the shadow of the house, and of the old
man. If brighter sunshine came, she would brighten with it. This morning,
surely, as the three companions, Pansie, puss, and Grandsir Dolliver,
emerged from the shadow of the house into the small adjoining enclosure,
they seemed all frolicsome alike.