Little Lord Fauntleroy
worst, Mr. Havisham looked at him with a feeling of anxiety. He looked
broken and haggard and changed. His rages had always been bad for
him, but this one had been worse than the rest because there had been
something more than rage in it.
He came slowly back to the sofa, at last, and stood near it.
“If any one had told me I could be fond of a child,” he said, his harsh
voice low and unsteady, “I should not have believed them. I always
detested children--my own more than the rest. I am fond of this one; he
is fond of me” (with a bitter smile). “I am not popular; I never was.
But he is fond of me. He never was afraid of me--he always trusted me.
He would have filled my place better than I have filled it. I know that.
He would have been an honor to the name.”
He bent down and stood a minute or so looking at the happy, sleeping
face. His shaggy eyebrows were knitted fiercely, and yet somehow he did
not seem fierce at all. He put up his hand, pushed the bright hair back
from the forehead, and then turned away and rang the bell.
When the largest footman appeared, he pointed to the sofa.
“Take”--he said, and then his voice changed a little--“take Lord
Fauntleroy to his room.”
XI
When Mr. Hobbs's young friend left him to go to Dorincourt Castle and
become Lord Fauntleroy, and the grocery-man had time to realize that the
Atlantic Ocean lay between himself and the small companion who had spent
so many agreeable hours in his society, he really began to feel very
lonely indeed. The fact was, Mr. Hobbs was not a clever man nor even a
bright one; he was, indeed, rather a slow and heavy person, and he had
never made many acquaintances. He was not mentally energetic enough
to know how to amuse himself, and in truth he never did anything of an
entertaining nature but read the newspapers and add up his accounts. It
was not very easy for him to add up his accounts, and sometimes it took
him a long time to bring them out right; and in the old days, little
Lord Fauntleroy, who had learned how to add up quite nicely with his
fingers and a slate and pencil, had sometimes even gone to the length
of trying to help him; and, then too, he had been so good a listener and
had taken such an interest in what the newspaper said, and he and Mr.
Hobbs had held such long conversations about the Revolution and the
British and the elections and the Republican party, that it was no
wonder his going left a blank in the grocery store. At first it seemed
to Mr. Hobbs that Cedric was not really far away, and would come back
again; that some day he would look up from his paper and see the little
lad standing in the door-way, in his white suit and red stockings, and
with his straw hat on the back of his head, and would hear him say in
his cheerful little voice: “Hello, Mr. Hobbs! This is a hot day--isn't
it?” But as the days passed on and this did not happen, Mr. Hobbs felt
very dull and uneasy. He did not even enjoy his newspaper as much as he
used to. He would put the paper down on his knee after reading it, and
sit and stare at the high stool for a long time. There were some marks
on the long legs which made him feel quite dejected and melancholy. They
were marks made by the heels of the next Earl of Dorincourt, when he
kicked and talked at the same time. It seems that even youthful earls
kick the legs of things they sit on;--noble blood and lofty lineage do
not prevent it. After looking at those marks, Mr. Hobbs would take
out his gold watch and open it and stare at the inscription: “From
his oldest friend, Lord Fauntleroy, to Mr. Hobbs. When this you see,
remember me.” And after staring at it awhile, he would shut it up with a
loud snap, and sigh and get up and go and stand in the door-way--between
the box of potatoes and the barrel of apples--and look up the street.
At night, when the store was closed, he would light his pipe and walk
slowly along the pavement until he reached the house where Cedric had
lived, on which there was a sign that read, “This House to Let”; and he
would stop near it and look up and shake his head, and puff at his pipe
very hard, and after a while walk mournfully back again.
This went on for two or three weeks before any new idea came to him.
Being slow and ponderous, it always took him a long time to reach a
new idea. As a rule, he did not like new ideas, but preferred old ones.
After two or three weeks, however, during which, instead of getting
better, matters really grew worse, a novel plan slowly and deliberately
dawned upon him. He would go to see Dick. He smoked a great many pipes
before he arrived at the conclusion, but finally he did arrive at it. He
would go to see Dick. He knew all about Dick. Cedric had told him, and
his idea was that perhaps Dick might be some comfort to him in the way
of talking things over.
So one day when Dick was very hard at work blacking a customer's boots,
a short, stout man with a heavy face and a bald head stopped on the
pavement and stared for two or three minutes at the bootblack's sign,
which read:
“PROFESSOR DICK TIPTON CAN'T BE BEAT.”
He stared at it so long that Dick began to take a lively interest in
him, and when he had put the finishing touch to his customer's boots, he
said:
“Want a shine, sir?”
The stout man came forward deliberately and put his foot on the rest.
“Yes,” he said.
Then when Dick fell to work, the stout man looked from Dick to the sign
and from the sign to Dick.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“From a friend o' mine,” said Dick,--“a little feller. He guv' me the
whole outfit. He was the best little feller ye ever saw. He's in England
now. Gone to be one o' them lords.”
“Lord--Lord--” asked Mr. Hobbs, with ponderous slowness, “Lord
Fauntleroy--Goin' to be Earl of Dorincourt?”
Dick almost dropped his brush.
“Why, boss!” he exclaimed, “d' ye know him yerself?”
“I've known him,” answered Mr. Hobbs, wiping his warm forehead, “ever
since he was born. We was lifetime acquaintances--that's what WE was.”
It really made him feel quite agitated to speak of it. He pulled the
splendid gold watch out of his pocket and opened it, and showed the
inside of the case to Dick.
“'When this you see, remember me,'” he read. “That was his parting
keepsake to me. 'I don't want you to forget me'--those was his words--I'd
ha' remembered him,” he went on, shaking his head, “if he hadn't given
me a thing an' I hadn't seen hide nor hair on him again. He was a
companion as ANY man would remember.”
“He was the nicest little feller I ever see,” said Dick. “An' as to
sand--I never seen so much sand to a little feller. I thought a heap
o' him, I did,--an' we was friends, too--we was sort o' chums from the
fust, that little young un an' me. I grabbed his ball from under a stage
fur him, an' he never forgot it; an' he'd come down here, he would,
with his mother or his nuss and he'd holler: 'Hello, Dick!' at me,
as friendly as if he was six feet high, when he warn't knee high to a
grasshopper, and was dressed in gal's clo'es. He was a gay little chap,
and when you was down on your luck, it did you good to talk to him.”
“That's so,” said Mr. Hobbs. “It was a pity to make a earl out of HIM.
He would have SHONE in the grocery business--or dry goods either; he
would have SHONE!” And he shook his head with deeper regret than ever.
It proved that they had so much to say to each other that it was not
possible to say it all at one time, and so it was agreed that the next
night Dick should make a visit to the store and keep Mr. Hobbs company.
The plan pleased Dick well enough. He had been a street waif nearly
all his life, but he had never been a bad boy, and he had always had a
private yearning for a more respectable kind of existence. Since he had
been in business for himself, he had made enough money to enable him to
sleep under a roof instead of out in the streets, and he had begun to
hope he might reach even a higher plane, in time. So, to be invited to
call on a stout, respectable man who owned a corner store, and even had
a horse and wagon, seemed to him quite an event.
“Do you know anything about earls and castles?” Mr. Hobbs inquired. “I'd
like to know more of the particklars.”
“There's a story about some on 'em in the Penny Story Gazette,” said
Dick. “It's called the 'Crime of a Coronet; or, The Revenge of the
Countess May.' It's a boss thing, too. Some of us boys 're takin' it to
read.”
“Bring it up when you come,” said Mr. Hobbs, “an' I'll pay for it. Bring
all you can find that have any earls in 'em. If there aren't earls,
markises'll do, or dooks--though HE never made mention of any dooks or
markises. We did go over coronets a little, but I never happened to see
any. I guess they don't keep 'em 'round here.”
“Tiffany 'd have 'em if anybody did,” said Dick, “but I don't know as
I'd know one if I saw it.”
Mr. Hobbs did not explain that he would not have known one if he saw it.
He merely shook his head ponderously.
“I s'pose there is very little call for 'em,” he said, and that ended
the matter.
This was the beginning of quite a substantial friendship. When Dick went
up to the store, Mr. Hobbs received him with great hospitality. He gave
him a chair tilted against the door, near a barrel of apples, and after
his young visitor was seated, he made a jerk at them with the hand in
which he held his pipe, saying:
“Help yerself.”
Then he looked at the story papers, and after that they read and
discussed the British aristocracy; and Mr. Hobbs smoked his pipe very
hard and shook his head a great deal. He shook it most when he pointed
out the high stool with the marks on its legs.
“There's his very kicks,” he said impressively; “his very kicks. I sit
and look at 'em by the hour. This is a world of ups an' it's a world of
downs. Why, he'd set there, an' eat crackers out of a box, an' apples
out of a barrel, an' pitch his cores into the street; an' now he's a
lord a-livin' in a castle. Them's a lord's kicks; they'll be a earl's
kicks some day. Sometimes I says to myself, says I, 'Well, I'll be
jiggered!'”
He seemed to derive a great deal of comfort from his reflections and
Dick's visit. Before Dick went home, they had a supper in the small
back-room; they had crackers and cheese and sardines, and other canned
things out of the store, and Mr. Hobbs solemnly opened two bottles of
ginger ale, and pouring out two glasses, proposed a toast.
“Here's to HIM!” he said, lifting his glass, “an' may he teach 'em a
lesson--earls an' markises an' dooks an' all!”
After that night, the two saw each other often, and Mr. Hobbs was much
more comfortable and less desolate. They read the Penny Story Gazette,
and many other interesting things, and gained a knowledge of the habits
of the nobility and gentry which would have surprised those despised
classes if they had realized it. One day Mr. Hobbs made a pilgrimage
to a book store down town, for the express purpose of adding to their
library. He went to the clerk and leaned over the counter to speak to
him.
“I want,” he said, “a book about earls.”
“What!” exclaimed the clerk.
“A book,” repeated the grocery-man, “about earls.”
“I'm afraid,” said the clerk, looking rather queer, “that we haven't
what you want.”
“Haven't?” said Mr. Hobbs, anxiously. “Well, say markises then--or
dooks.”
“I know of no such book,” answered the clerk.
Mr. Hobbs was much disturbed. He looked down on the floor,--then he
looked up.
“None about female earls?” he inquired.
“I'm afraid not,” said the clerk with a smile.
“Well,” exclaimed Mr. Hobbs, “I'll be jiggered!”
He was just going out of the store, when the clerk called him back and
asked him if a story in which the nobility were chief characters would