the whole world would be burned, and we ourselves be consigned to an
eternity of torture, unless we mended our ways more than we at present
seemed at all likely to do. All this was so alarming that we fell to
screaming and made such a hullabaloo that the nurse was obliged for her
own peace to reassure us. Then we wept, but more composedly, as we
remembered that there would be no more tea and cakes for us now at old
Mrs Pontifex's.

On the day of the funeral, however, we had a great excitement; old Mr
Pontifex sent round a penny loaf to every inhabitant of the village
according to a custom still not uncommon at the beginning of the century;
the loaf was called a dole. We had never heard of this custom before,
besides, though we had often heard of penny loaves, we had never before
seen one; moreover, they were presents to us as inhabitants of the
village, and we were treated as grown up people, for our father and
mother and the servants had each one loaf sent them, but only one. We
had never yet suspected that we were inhabitants at all; finally, the
little loaves were new, and we were passionately fond of new bread, which
we were seldom or never allowed to have, as it was supposed not to be
good for us. Our affection, therefore, for our old friend had to stand
against the combined attacks of archaeological interest, the rights of
citizenship and property, the pleasantness to the eye and goodness for
food of the little loaves themselves, and the sense of importance which
was given us by our having been intimate with someone who had actually
died. It seemed upon further inquiry that there was little reason to
anticipate an early death for anyone of ourselves, and this being so, we
rather liked the idea of someone else's being put away into the
churchyard; we passed, therefore, in a short time from extreme depression
to a no less extreme exultation; a new heaven and a new earth had been
revealed to us in our perception of the possibility of benefiting by the