“Nancy Pansy” was what Middleburgh called her, though the parish
register of baptism contained nothing nearer the name than that of
one Anne, daughter of Baylor Seddon, Esq., and Ellenor his wife.
Whatever the register may have thought about it, “Nancy Pansy” was what
Middleburgh called her, and she looked so much like a cherub, with her
great eyes laughing up at you and her tangles blowing all about her
dimpling pink face, that Dr. Spotswood Hunter, or “the Old Doctor,” as
he was known to Middleburgh, used to vow she had gotten out of Paradise
by mistake that Christmas Eve.
Nancy Pansy was the idol of the old doctor, as the old doctor was the
idol of Middleburgh. He had given her a doll baby on the day she was
born, and he always brought her one on her birthday, though, of course,
the first three or four which he gave her were of rubber, because as
long as she was a little girl she used to chew her doll after a most
cannibal-like fashion, she and Harry’s puppies taking turn and turn
about at chewing in the most impartial and friendly way. Harry was
the old doctor’s son. As she grew a little older, however, the doctor
brought her better dolls; but the puppies got older faster than Nancy
Pansy, and kept on chewing up her dolls, so they did not last very
long, which, perhaps, was why she never had a “real live doll,” as she
called it.
Some people said the reason the old doctor was so fond of Nancy Pansy
was because he had been a lover of her beautiful aunt, whose picture
as Charity giving Bread to the Poor Woman and her Children was in the
stained-glass window in the church, with the Advent angel in the panel
below, to show that she had died at Christmas-tide and was an angel
herself now; some said it was because he had had a little daughter
himself who had died when a wee bit of a girl, and Nancy Pansy reminded
him of her; some said it was because his youngest born, his boy Harry,
with the light hair, who now commanded a company in the Army of
Northern Virginia, was so fond of Nancy Pansy’s lovely sister Ellen;
some said it was because the old doctor was fond of all children; but
the old doctor said it was “because Nancy Pansy was Nancy Pansy,” and
looked like an angel, and had more sense than anybody in Middleburgh,
except his old sorrel horse Slouch, who, he always maintained, had
sense enough to have prevented the war if he had been consulted.
Whatever was the cause, Nancy Pansy was the old doctor’s boon
companion; and wherever the old doctor was, whether in his old
rattling brown buggy, with Slouch jogging sleepily along the dusty
roads which Middleburgh called her “streets,” or sitting in the
shadiest corner of his porch, Nancy Pansy was in her waking hours
generally beside him, her great pansy-colored eyes and her sunny hair
making a bright contrast to the white locks and tanned cheeks of the
old man. His home was just across the fence from the big house in
which Nancy Pansy lived, and there was a hole where two palings were
pulled off, through which Nancy Pansy used to slip when she went
back and forth, and through which her little black companion, whose
name, according to Nancy Pansy’s dictionary, was “Marphy,” just could
squeeze. Sometimes, indeed, Nancy Pansy used to fall asleep over at the
old doctor’s on the warm summer afternoons, and wake up next morning,
curiously enough, to find herself in a strange room, in a great big
bed, with a railing around the top of the high bedposts, and curtains
hanging from it, and with Marphy asleep on a pallet near by.
“That child is your shadow, doctor,” said Nancy Pansy’s mother one day
to him.
“No, madam; she is my sunshine,” answered the old man, gravely.
Nancy Pansy’s mother smiled, for when the old doctor said a thing he
meant it. All Middleburgh knew that, from old Slouch, who never would
open his eyes for any one else, and old Mrs. Hippin, who never would
admit she was better to any one else, up to Nancy Pansy herself.
Perhaps this was the reason why when the war broke out, and all the
other men went into the army, the old doctor, who was too old and
feeble to go himself, but had sent his only son Harry, was chosen by
tacit consent as Middleburgh’s general adviser and guardian. Thus it
was he who had to advise Mrs. Latimer, the druggist’s wife, how to keep
the little apothecary’s shop at the corner of the Court-house Square
after her husband went into the army; and it was he who advised Mrs.
Seddon to keep the post-office in the little building at the bottom of
her lawn, which had served as her husband’s law office before he went
off to the war at the head of the Middleburgh Artillery. He even gave
valuable assistance as well as advice to Mrs. Hippin about curing her
chickens of the gapes; and to Nancy Pansy’s great astonishment had
several times performed a most remarkable operation by inserting a hair
from old Slouch’s mane down the invalid’s little stretched throat.
He used to go around the town nearly every afternoon, seeing the
healthy as well as the sick, and giving advice as well as physic, both
being taken with equal confidence. It was what he called “reviewing his
out-posts,” and he used to explain to Nancy Pansy that that was the way
her father and his Harry did in their camp. Nancy Pansy did not wholly
understand him, but she knew it was something that was just right; so
she nodded gravely, and said, “Umh-hmh!”
It was not hard to get a doll the first year of the war, but before the
second year was half over there was not one left in Middleburgh. The
old doctor explained to Nancy Pansy that they had all gone away to the
war. She did not quite understand what dollies had to do with fighting,
but she knew that war made the dolls disappear. Still she kept on
talking about the new doll she would get on her birthday at Christmas,
and as the old doctor used to talk to her about it, and discuss the
sort of hair it should have, and the kind of dress it should wear,
she never doubted that she should get it in her stocking as usual on
Christmas morning.