We were very merry, but it is so
long ago that I have forgotten nearly everything save that we were
very merry. Almost the only thing that remains with me as a
permanent impression was the fact that Theobald one day beat his nurse
and teased her, and when she said she should go away cried out, "You
shan't go away- I'll keep you on purpose to torment you."
One winter's morning, however, in the year 1811, we heard the church
bell tolling while we were dressing in the back nursery and were
told it was for old Mrs. Pontifex. Our manservant John told us and
added with grim levity that they were ringing the bell to come and
take her away. She had had a fit of paralysis which had carried her
off quite suddenly. It was very shocking, the more so because our
nurse assured us that if God chose we might all have fits of paralysis
ourselves that very day and be taken straight off to the Day of
Judgement. The Day of Judgement indeed, according to the opinion of
those who were most likely to know, would not under any
circumstances be delayed more than a few years longer, and then the
whole world would be burned, and we ourselves be consigned to an
eternity of torture, unless we mended our ways more than we at present
seemed at all likely to do.
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