e date of
each offence in either of the above respects and let the bench of
magistrates or judge, before whom he has been convicted, dispose of his
property as they shall think right and reasonable if he dies during the
time that his will-making power is suspended.

Mr Pontifex would have the boys into the dining-room. "My dear John, my
dear Theobald," he would say, "look at me. I began life with nothing but
the clothes with which my father and mother sent me up to London. My
father gave me ten shillings and my mother five for pocket money and I
thought them munificent. I never asked my father for a shilling in the
whole course of my life, nor took aught from him beyond the small sum he
used to allow me monthly till I was in receipt of a salary. I made my
own way and I shall expect my sons to do the same. Pray don't take it
into your heads that I am going to wear my life out making money that my
sons may spend it for me. If you want money you must make it for
yourselves as I did, for I give you my word I will not leave a penny to
either of you unless you show that you deserve it. Young people seem
nowadays to expect all kinds of luxuries and indulgences which were never
heard of when I was a boy. Why, my father was a common carpenter, and
here you are both of you at public schools, costing me ever so many
hundreds a year, while I at your age was plodding away behind a desk in
my Uncle Fairlie's counting house. What should I not have done if I had
had one half of your advantages? You should become dukes or found new
empires in undiscovered countries, and even then I doubt whether you
would have done proportionately so much as I have done. No, no, I shall
see you through school and college and then, if you please, you will make
your own way in the world."

In this manner he would work himself up into such a state of virtuous
indignation that he would sometimes thrash the boys then and there upon
some pretext invented at the moment.

And yet, as children went, the young Pontifexes were fortunate; there
would be ten families of young people worse off for one better; they ate
and drank good wholesome food, slept in comfortable beds, had the best
doctors to attend them when they were ill and the best education that
could be had for money. The want of fresh air does not seem much to
affect the happiness of children in a London alley: the greater part of
them sing and play as though they were on a moor in Scotlan