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 (_pensée_), 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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