erning them.

His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let him alone. His son
had fairly distanced him, and in an inarticulate way the father knew it
perfectly well. After a few years he took to wearing his best clothes
whenever his son came to stay with him, nor would he discard them for his
ordinary ones till the young man had returned to London. I believe old
Mr Pontifex, along with his pride and affection, felt also a certain fear
of his son, as though of something which he could not thoroughly
understand, and whose ways, notwithstanding outward agreement, were
nevertheless not as his ways. Mrs Pontifex felt nothing of this; to her
George was pure and absolute perfection, and she saw, or thought she saw,
with pleasure, that he resembled her and her family in feature as well as
in disposition rather than her husband and his.

When George was about twenty-five years old his uncle took him into
partnership on very liberal terms. He had little cause to regret this
step. The young man infused fresh vigour into a concern that was already
vigorous, and by the time he was thirty found himself in the receipt of
not less than 1500 pounds a year as his share of the profits. Two years
later he married a lady about seven years younger than himself, who
brought him a handsome dowry. She died in 1805, when her youngest child
Alethea was born, and her husband did not marry again.

CHAPTER III

In the early years of the century five little children and a couple of
nurses began to make periodical visits to Paleham. It is needless to say
they were a rising generation of Pontifexes, towards whom the old couple,
their grandparents, were as tenderly deferential as they would have been
to the children of the Lord Lieutenant of the County. Their names were
Eliza, Maria, John, Theobald (who like myself was born in 1802), and
Alethea. Mr Pontifex always put the prefix "master" or "miss" before the
names of his grandchildren, except in the case of Alethea, who was his
favourite. To have resisted his grandchildren would have been as
impossible for him as to have resisted his wife; even old Mrs Pontifex
yielded before her son's children, and gave them all manner of licence
which she would never have allowed even to my sisters and myself, who
stood next in her regard. Two regulations only they must attend to; they
must wipe their shoes well on coming into the house, and they must not
overfeed Mr Pontifex's organ wi