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In this merry humor they sat down to the table, great-grandpapa and Pansie side by side, and the kitten, as soon appeared, making a third in the party.
No, she said, not a pink saucer, but as if they were two coals of fire. When she had heard as much as she could stand, for 'Cousin Pansie' explained passages to her, explained, you know, she sent for her lawyer, and that same somebody had to be a witness to a new will she had drawn up. It was not to my advantage.
He took walks with Pansie, and though, of course, her little footsteps, treading on the elastic air of childhood, far outstripped his own, still the old man knew that he was not beyond the recuperative period of life, and that exercise out of doors and proper food can do somewhat towards retarding the approach of age.
Grandpapa," said little Pansie, who had stood by him, wishing to speak to him at least a minute, but had been deterred by his absorption; "why do you say 'Pshaw'?" "Pshaw!" repeated Grandpapa, "there is one ingredient that I don't know." So this very hopeful design was necessarily given up, but that it had occurred to Dr.
Unquestionably it was to have been as much a "Romance of Immortality" as "Septimius"; and the exquisite contrast of the child Pansie who promised to be the author's most captivating feminine creation with the aged man, would no doubt have given us a theme of celestial loveliness, as compared with the forbidding and remorseless mournfulness of the preliminary work.
Little Pansie had also made 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.
"Indeed, I find old age less uncomfortable than I supposed. Little Pansie and I make excellent companions for one another."
It is foolish in me to be dallying with such a mess, which I thought was a piece of quackery, while that strange visitor bade me do it, and yet, what a strength has come from it! He said it was a rare cordial, and, methinks, it has brightened up my weary life all day, so that Pansie has found me the fitter playmate. And then the dose it is so absurdly small! I will try it again."
The Doctor opened it, and there she stood, a rather pale and large- eyed little thing, quaint in her aspect, as might well be the case with a motherless child, dwelling in an uncheerful house, with no other playmates than a decrepit old man and a kitten, and no better atmosphere within- doors than the odor of decayed apothecary's stuff, nor gayer neighborhood than that of the adjacent burial-ground, where all her relatives, from her great-grandmother downward, lay calling to her, "Pansie, Pansie, it is bedtime!" even in the prime of the summer morning.
It seems as if Hawthorne must have felt all this himself during the last year of his life, to describe it so vividly; but he ascends by these infirm steps to loftier heights than ever before, and the scene in which he represents Doctor Dolliver seated at night before the fire in his chamber after Pansie had been put to bed, is the noblest passage in the whole cycle of Hawthorne's art; one of those rare passages written in moments of gifted insight, when it seems as if a higher power guided the writer's hand.
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