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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