I suppose in reality not a leaf
goes yellow in autumn 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 L20,000 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 L17,500 when Mr.
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