It was about ten o’clock that night when the old doctor came home from his round of visits, and opening his old secretary, took out a long thin bundle wrapped in paper, and slipping it into his pocket, went out again into the snow which was falling. Old Limpid, the doctor’s man, had taken Slouch to the stable, so the old doctor walked, stumbling around through the dark by the gate, thinking with a sigh of his boy Harry, who would just have vaulted over the palings, and who was that night sleeping in the snow somewhere. However, he smiled when he put the bundle into Nancy Pansy’s long stocking, and he smiled again when he put his old worn boots to the fire and warmed his feet. But when Nancy Pansy slipped next morning through her “little doctor’s-gate,” as she called her hole in the fence, and burst into his room before he was out of bed, to show him with dancing eyes what Santa Claus had brought her, and announced that she had “named her ‘Harry,’ all herself,” the old doctor had to wipe his eyes before he could really see her. Harry was the first “real doll” Nancy Pansy had ever had--that was what she said--and Harry soon became as well known in Middleburgh as Nancy Pansy herself. She used to accompany Nancy Pansy and the old doctor on their rounds, and instead of the latter two being called “the twins,” they and Harry were now dubbed “the triplets.” It was astonishing what an influence Harry came to have on Nancy Pansy’s life. She carried her everywhere, and the doll would frequently be seen sitting up in the old doctor’s buggy alone, whilst Slouch dozed in the sun outside of some patient’s door. Of course, so much work as Harry had to do had the effect of marring her freshness a good deal, and she met with one or two severe accidents, such as breaking her leg, and cracking her neck; but the old doctor attended her in the gravest way, and performed such successful operations that really she was, except as to looks, almost as good as new; besides, as Nancy Pansy explained, dolls had to have measles and “theseases” just like other folks. III. In March, 186--, Middleburgh “fell.” That is, it fell into the hands of the Union army, and remained in their hands afterwards. It was terrible at first, and Nancy Pansy stuffed Harry into a box, and hid her away.