Life and Gabriella: The Story of a Woman's CourageGlasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
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Life and Gabriella: The Story of a Woman's Courage
Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
"Would rather stay with mother than go with Fanny and Mutton." That was
another of his eccentricities. Just as he had insisted that God's "last
name was Walker," so he had begun of his own accord, and for no visible
reason, to call nurse "Mutton." He was always fitting names of his own
invention to persons; and in his selection he was guided by a principle
so obscure that Gabriella had never been able to discover its origin.
Thus his grandmother from the first had been "Budd," and he had
immediately started to call Miss Polly "Pang."
"Don't you want to go back to the Park, Archibald? You must finish your
walk."
"Will the poor boy be there?" He never forgot anything. It was quite
probable that he would inquire for "the poor boy" a year hence.
"Perhaps. You might take him an apple and a penny."
He stood gravely considering the plan, with one hand in his mother's and
one on Miss Polly's knee.
"I'll take Pang to nurse him," he said when he had decided against the
suggestion of the apple and the penny. "He hasn't any nurse, and Fanny
wouldn't like him to have hers. I'll take Pang."
"But Pang isn't a nurse, dear. There, now, run to Fanny. Miss Polly
lives so far away she can't stay very long."
He went obediently, for he was usually amenable to his mother's
commands, stopping only once at the door to ask if "Pang lived as far
away as God and could she manage to get a message to Him about the poor
boy needing shoes?"
"I declare I can't make out that child to save my soul," remarked Miss
Polly as he shut the door carefully and ran down the hall to the
nursery. "The more I study him the curiouser he seems to me. If he wan't
so quick about some things you might think his wits were sort of
addled--but they ain't, are they? Now, whatever do you reckon put the
notion in his head to call me 'Pang?"
All the smiling, circular wrinkles in her face were working with
amusement while her little black eyes twinkled like jet beads above the
ruddy creases in her cheeks.
"I can't imagine, for he must have made up the word for himself. But
don't you think he is like father, Miss Polly? I love to hear you say
so."
"That child? Why, he's the very spit of yo' pa, Gabriella, and there
ain't any two ideas about it. I thought so the very first time I ever
saw him, and now that I come to think of it, it is exactly like yo' pa
to be makin' up all kinds of foolish names out of nothin'. Yo' pa used
to call me Poll Parrot, that he did."
"Mother thinks Archibald is going to be very much like him. She saw him
in the mountains last summer."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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