You will think I am a very long time getting to the "pansy," which gives its name to this little story, but we are coming to it now.
There was a great consultation held in Pansy's room, and this was what the children decided; sixpence should be spent on a pair of ducks to float in a basin of water attracted by a magnet, a toy which they had seen in a shop window with the price marked in plain figures. And sixpence should be spent, for Pansy's own special pleasure, in a flower growing in a pot, such as they had often seen on the flower-stall below their windows. The ducks could be bought that very morning, which Pansy was glad of, as she knew that Bob and Ruth were even more anxious to have them than she was herself. But for the flower she would have to wait till the next day.
However, the birthday passed very happily, and it was very nice to wake in the morning with the feeling that part of its pleasures were still to come, and mamma promised to go with her herself to the stall to choose the flower.
It was to be a pansy. Not a quite fully blown one, her mother advised her, for then it would be the sooner over, but one nearly so. There had been quite a good choice of them for the last week or two; the only difficulty would be what colour to have.
"Yellow ones are very pretty," said the little girl as she skipped along by her mother's side that Thursday morning on their way to the market, for though it was just below the vicarage windows, you had to make quite a round to get to it from the front door, "yellow ones, and those browny ones too are very nice, but I think I like the purple ones best—I mean the violet-coloured ones—don't you mamma?"
"I think I do," her mother agreed. "They remind one of the dear little wild pansies, or dog violets, too."
And by good luck, the old woman who kept the flower-stall, had some beautiful purple pansies, none of the paler ones were half so pretty that day, so the choice was not so difficult after all. Mamma picked out a beauty, with two flowers on it, one almost full blown, and the other not far behind, and a proud little girl was Pansy, as, after having paid her sixpence she trotted home again, her precious namesake tightly clasped in her arms.
"I don't think I've ever had such nice birthday presents, have I, mamma?" she said, as she lifted up her own soft little face, as sweet and as soft as the flower, for a kiss, before hurrying upstairs to the nursery to show her treasure.
