Now, however, my going was a necessity, and I confess I never felt
more subdued than I did on arriving there with the dead playmate of my
childhood.
I found the village more changed than I had expected. The railway
had come there, and a brand new yellow brick station was on the site
of old Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex's cottage. Nothing but the carpenter's
shop was now standing. I saw many faces I knew, but even in six
years they seemed to have grown wonderfully older. Some of the very
old were dead, and the old were getting very old in their stead. I
felt like the changeling in the fairy story who came back after a
seven years' sleep. Everyone seemed glad to see me, though I had never
given them particular cause to be so, and everyone who remembered
old Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex spoke warmly of them and were pleased at
their granddaughter's wishing to be laid near them. Entering the
churchyard and standing in the twilight of a gusty, cloudy evening
on the spot close beside old Mrs. Pontifex's grave which I had
chosen for Alethea's, I thought of the many times that she, who
would lie there henceforth, and I, who must surely lie one day in some
such another place, though when and where I knew not, had romped
over this very spot as childish lovers together.
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