The Secret Garden, A Little Princess & Little Lord Fauntleroy (Illustrated) - Three Wonderful Children's Classics

II

There was never a more amazed little boy than Cedric during the week that followed; there was never so strange or so unreal a week. In the first place, the story his mamma told him was a very curious one. He was obliged to hear it two or three times before he could understand it. He could not imagine what Mr. Hobbs would think of it. It began with earls: his grandpapa, whom he had never seen, was an earl; and his eldest uncle, if he had not been killed by a fall from his horse, would have been an earl, too, in time; and after his death, his other uncle would have been an earl, if he had not died suddenly, in Rome, of a fever. After that, his own papa, if he had lived, would have been an earl, but, since they all had died and only Cedric was left, it appeared that HE was to be an earl after his grandpapa’s death—and for the present he was Lord Fauntleroy.

He turned quite pale when he was first told of it.

“Oh! Dearest!” he said, “I should rather not be an earl. None of the boys are earls. Can’t I NOT be one?”

But it seemed to be unavoidable. And when, that evening, they sat together by the open window looking out into the shabby street, he and his mother had a long talk about it. Cedric sat on his footstool, clasping one knee in his favorite attitude and wearing a bewildered little face rather red from the exertion of thinking. His grandfather had sent for him to come to England, and his mamma thought he must go.

“Because,” she said, looking out of the window with sorrowful eyes, “I know your papa would wish it to be so, Ceddie. He loved his home very much; and there are many things to be thought of that a little boy can’t quite understand. I should be a selfish little mother if I did not send you. When you are a man, you will see why.”

Ceddie shook his head mournfully.

“I shall be very sorry to leave Mr. Hobbs,” he said. “I’m afraid he’ll miss me, and I shall miss him. And I shall miss them all.”

When Mr. Havisham—who was the family lawyer of the Earl of Dorincourt, and who had been sent by him to bring Lord Fauntleroy to England—came the next day, Cedric heard many things. But, somehow, it did not console him to hear that he was to be a very rich man when he grew up, and that he would have castles here and castles there, and great parks and deep mines and grand estates and tenantry. He was troubled about his friend, Mr. Hobbs, and he went to see him at the store soon after breakfast, in great anxiety of mind.

He found him reading the morning paper, and he approached him with a grave demeanor. He really felt it would be a great shock to Mr. Hobbs to hear what had befallen him, and on his way to the store he had been thinking how it would be best to break the news.

“Hello!” said Mr. Hobbs. “Mornin’!”

“Good-morning,” said Cedric.

He did not climb up on the high stool as usual, but sat down on a cracker-box and clasped his knee, and was so silent for a few moments that Mr. Hobbs finally looked up inquiringly over the top of his newspaper.

“Hello!” he said again.

Cedric gathered all his strength of mind together.

“Mr. Hobbs,” he said, “do you remember what we were talking about yesterday morning?”

“Well,” replied Mr. Hobbs,—“seems to me it was England.”

“Yes,” said Cedric; “but just when Mary came for me, you know?”

Mr. Hobbs rubbed the back of his head.

“We WAS mentioning Queen Victoria and the aristocracy.”

“Yes,” said Cedric, rather hesitatingly, “and—and earls; don’t you know?”

“Why, yes,” returned Mr. Hobbs; “we DID touch ‘em up a little; that’s so!”

Cedric flushed up to the curly bang on his forehead. Nothing so embarrassing as this had ever happened to him in his life. He was a little afraid that it might be a trifle embarrassing to Mr. Hobbs, too.

“You said,” he proceeded, “that you wouldn’t have them sitting ‘round on your cracker-barrels.”

“So I did!” returned Mr. Hobbs, stoutly. “And I meant it. Let ‘em try it—that’s all!”

“Mr. Hobbs,” said Cedric, “one is sitting on this box now!”

Mr. Hobbs almost jumped out of his chair.

“What!” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” Cedric announced, with due modesty; “I am one—or I am going to be. I won’t deceive you.”

Mr. Hobbs looked agitated. He rose up suddenly and went to look at the thermometer.

“The mercury’s got into your head!” he exclaimed, turning back to examine his young friend’s countenance. “It IS a hot day! How do you feel? Got any pain? When did you begin to feel that way?”

He put his big hand on the little boy’s hair. This was more embarrassing than ever.

“Thank you,” said Ceddie; “I’m all right. There is nothing the matter with my head. I’m sorry to say it’s true, Mr. Hobbs. That was what Mary came to take me home for. Mr. Havisham was telling my mamma, and he is a lawyer.”

Mr. Hobbs sank into his chair and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

“ONE of us has got a sunstroke!” he exclaimed.

“No,” returned Cedric, “we haven’t. We shall have to make the best of it, Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Havisham came all the way from England to tell us about it. My grandpapa sent him.”

Mr. Hobbs stared wildly at the innocent, serious little face before him.

“Who is your grandfather?” he asked.

Cedric put his hand in his pocket and carefully drew out a piece of paper, on which something was written in his own round, irregular hand.

“I couldn’t easily remember it, so I wrote it down on this,” he said. And he read aloud slowly: “‘John Arthur Molyneux Errol, Earl of Dorincourt.’ That is his name, and he lives in a castle—in two or three castles, I think. And my papa, who died, was his youngest son; and I shouldn’t have been a lord or an earl if my papa hadn’t died; and my papa wouldn’t have been an earl if his two brothers hadn’t died. But they all died, and there is no one but me,—no boy,—and so I have to be one; and my grandpapa has sent for me to come to England.”

Mr. Hobbs seemed to grow hotter and hotter. He mopped his forehead and his bald spot and breathed hard. He began to see that something very remarkable had happened; but when he looked at the little boy sitting on the cracker-box, with the innocent, anxious expression in his childish eyes, and saw that he was not changed at all, but was simply as he had been the day before, just a handsome, cheerful, brave little fellow in a blue suit and red neck-ribbon, all this information about the nobility bewildered him. He was all the more bewildered because Cedric gave it with such ingenuous simplicity, and plainly without realizing himself how stupendous it was.

“Wha—what did you say your name was?” Mr. Hobbs inquired.

“It’s Cedric Errol, Lord Fauntleroy,” answered Cedric. “That was what Mr. Havisham called me. He said when I went into the room: ‘And so this is little Lord Fauntleroy!’”

“Well,” said Mr. Hobbs, “I’ll be—jiggered!”

This was an exclamation he always used when he was very much astonished or excited. He could think of nothing else to say just at that puzzling moment.

Cedric felt it to be quite a proper and suitable ejaculation. His respect and affection for Mr. Hobbs were so great that he admired and approved of all his remarks. He had not seen enough of society as yet to make him realize that sometimes Mr. Hobbs was not quite conventional. He knew, of course, that he was different from his mamma, but, then, his mamma was a lady, and he had an idea that ladies were always different from gentlemen.

He looked at Mr. Hobbs wistfully.

“England is a long way off, isn’t it?” he asked.

“It’s across the Atlantic Ocean,” Mr. Hobbs answered.

“That’s the worst of it,” said Cedric. “Perhaps I shall not see you again for a long time. I don’t like to think of that, Mr. Hobbs.”

“The best of friends must part,” said Mr. Hobbs.

“Well,” said Cedric, “we have been friends for a great many years, haven’t we?”

“Ever since you was born,” Mr. Hobbs answered. “You was about six weeks old when you was first walked out on this street.”

“Ah,” remarked Cedric, with a sigh, “I never thought I should have to be an earl then!”

“You think,” said Mr. Hobbs, “there’s no getting out of it?”

“I’m afraid not,” answered Cedric. “My mamma says that my papa would wish me to do it. But if I have to be an earl, there’s one thing I can do: I can try to be a good one. I’m not going to be a tyrant. And if there is ever to be another war with America, I shall try to stop it.”

His conversation with Mr. Hobbs was a long and serious one. Once having got over the first shock, Mr. Hobbs was not so rancorous as might have been expected; he endeavored to resign himself to the situation, and before the interview was at an end he had asked a great many questions. As Cedric could answer but few of them, he endeavored to answer them himself, and, being fairly launched on the subject of earls and marquises and lordly estates, explained many things in a way which would probably have astonished Mr. Havisham, could that gentleman have heard it.

But then there were many things which astonished Mr. Havisham. He had spent all his life in England, and was not accustomed to American people and American habits....