he was becoming more and more subject. I stayed to luncheon. The
old gentleman was cross and very difficult; he could eat nothing--had no
appetite at all. Christina tried to coax him with a little bit of the
fleshy part of a mutton chop. "How in the name of reason can I be asked
to eat a mutton chop?" he exclaimed angrily; "you forget, my dear
Christina, that you have to deal with a stomach that is totally
disorganised," and he pushed the plate from him, pouting and frowning
like a naughty old child. Writing as I do by the light of a later
knowledge, I suppose I should have seen nothing in this but the world's
growing pains, the disturbance inseparable from transition in human
things. I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without
ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very
uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling--but surely nature might
find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give
her mind to it. Why should the generations overlap one another at all?
Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty
thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake
up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only
left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some
weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account?

About a year and a half afterwards the tables were turned on
Battersby--for Mrs John Pontifex was safely delivered of a boy. A year
or so later still, George Pontifex was himself struck down suddenly by a
fit of paralysis, much as his mother had been, but he did not see the
years of his mother. When his will was opened, it was found that an
original bequest of 20,000 pounds to Theobald himself (over and above the
sum that had been settled upon him and Christina at the time of his
marriage) had been cut down to 17,500 pounds when Mr Pontifex left
"something" to Ernest. The "something" proved to be 2500 pounds, which
was to accumulate in the hands of trustees. The rest of the property
went to John Pontifex, except that each of the daughters was left with
about 15,000 pounds over and above 5000 pounds a piece which they
inherited from their mother.

Theobald's father then had told him the truth but not the whole truth.
Nevertheless, what right had Theobald to complain? Certainly it was
rather hard to make him think that he and his were to be gainers, an