flourish; so that, shrivelled, cankered, and scarcely showing a green
leaf, both Pansie and the kitten probably mistook it for a weed. After
their joint efforts had made a pretty big trench about it, the little girl
seized the shrub with both hands, bestriding it with her plump little
legs, and giving so vigorous a pull, that, long accustomed to be
transplanted annually, it came up by the roots, and little Pansie came
down in a sitting posture, making a broad impress on the soft earth. "See,
see, Doctor!" cries Pansie, comically enough giving him his title of
courtesy,--"look, grandpapa, the big, naughty weed!"

Now the Doctor had at once a peculiar dread and a peculiar value for this
identical shrub, both because his grandson's investigations had been
applied more ardently to it than to all the rest, and because it was
associated in his mind with an ancient and sad recollection. For he had
never forgotten that his wife, the early lost, had once taken a fancy to
wear its flowers, day after day, through the whole season of their bloom,
in her bosom, where they glowed like a gem, and deepened her somewhat
pallid beauty with a richness never before seen in it. At least such was
the effect which this tropical flower imparted to the beloved form in his
memory, and thus it somehow both brightened and wronged her. This had
happened not long before her death; and whenever, in the subsequent years,
this plant had brought its annual flower, it had proved a kind of talisman
to bring up the image of Bessie, radiant with this glow that did not
really belong to her naturally passive beauty, quickly interchanging with
another image of her form, with the snow of death on cheek and forehead.
This reminiscence had remained among the things of which the Doctor was
always conscious, but had never breathed a word, through the whole of his
long life,--a sprig of sensibility that perhaps helped to keep him
tenderer and purer than other men, who entertain no such follies. And the
sight of the shrub often brought back the faint, golden gleam of her hair,