"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 Pontifex had decided that they were to form a happy
family party; so come they all must, and be happy they all must, or it
would be the worse for them.
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