The Way of All Flesh
ever it was clear. My father came on him in the afternoon, just as the sun was setting, and saw him with his arms resting on the top of the wall looking towards the sun over a field through which there was a path on which my father was. My father heard him say "Good-bye, sun; good-bye, sun," as the sun sank, and saw by his tone and manner that he was feeling very feeble. Before the next sunset he was gone.
There was no dole. Some of his grandchildren were brought to the funeral and we remonstrated with them, but did not take much by doing so. John Pontifex, who was a year older than I was, sneered at penny loaves, and intimated that if I wanted one it must be because my papa and mamma could not afford to buy me one, whereon I believe we did something like fighting, and I rather think John Pontifex got the worst of it, but it may have been the other way. I remember my sister's nurse, for I was just outgrowing nurses myself, reported the matter to higher quarters, and we were all of us put to some ignominy, but we had been thoroughly awakened from our dream, and it was long enough before we could hear the words "penny loaf" mentioned without our ears tingling with shame. If there had been a dozen doles afterwards we should not have deigned to touch one of them.
George Pontifex put up a monument to his parents, a plain slab in Paleham church, inscribed with the following epitaph:—
of
JOHN PONTIFEX
who was born August 16th, 1727, and died February 8, 1812,
In his 85th year,
and of
RUTH PONTIFEX, His Wife,
who was born October 13, 1727, and died January 10, 1811,
in her 84th year.
they were unostentatious but exemplary in the discharge
of their religious, moral, and social duties.
this monument was placed by their only son.
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