One grief only overshadowed the early years of
their married life: I mean the fact that no living children were born to
them.
CHAPTER XVII
In the course of time this sorrow was removed. At the beginning of the
fifth year of her married life Christina was safely delivered of a boy.
This was on the sixth of September 1835.
Word was immediately sent to old Mr Pontifex, who received the news with
real pleasure. His son John's wife had borne daughters only, and he was
seriously uneasy lest there should be a failure in the male line of his
descendants. The good news, therefore, was doubly welcome, and caused as
much delight at Elmhurst as dismay in Woburn Square, where the John
Pontifexes were then living.
Here, indeed, this freak of fortune was felt to be all the more cruel on
account of the impossibility of resenting it openly; but the delighted
grandfather cared nothing for what the John Pontifexes might feel or not
feel; he had wanted a grandson and he had got a grandson, and this should
be enough for everybody; and, now that Mrs Theobald had taken to good
ways, she might bring him more grandsons, which would be desirable, for
he should not feel safe with fewer than three.
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