"I shall bring my own cook, and have told him to get everything ready
for the christening dinner. Ask as many of your best neighbours as
your table will hold. By the way, I have told Lesueur not to get a
lobster- you had better drive over yourself and get one from
Saltness (for Battersby was only fourteen or fifteen miles from the
sea coast); they are better there, at least I think so, than
anywhere else in England.
"I have put your boy down for something in the event of his
attaining the age of twenty-one years. If your brother John
continues to have nothing but girls I may do more later on, but I have
many claims upon me, and am not as well off as you may imagine.-
Your affectionate father,
"G. PONTIFEX."
A few days afterwards the writer of the above letter made his
appearance in a fly which had brought him from Gildenham to Battersby,
a distance of fourteen miles. There was Lesueur, the cook, on the
box with the driver, and as many hampers as the fly could carry were
disposed upon the roof and elsewhere. Next day the John Pontifexes had
to come, and Eliza and Maria, as well as Alethea, who, by her own
special request, was godmother to the boy, for Mr.
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