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 man-servant 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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