Cedric flushed up to the curly hair 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 biscuit 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 shan’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 have not. 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 biscuit 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 black cloth 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 were 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 endeavoured 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 endeavoured 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. He had been connected professionally with the family of the Earl of Dorincourt for nearly forty years, and he knew all about its grand estates and its great wealth and importance; and, in a cold business-like way, he felt an interest in this little boy who, in the future, was to be the master and owner of them all – the future Earl of Dorincourt. He had known all about the old Earl’s disappointment in his elder sons and all about his fierce rage at Captain Cedric’s American marriage, and he knew how he still hated the gentle little widow and would not speak of her except with bitter and cruel words. He insisted than she was only a common American girl who had entrapped his son into marrying her because she knew he was an earl’s son. The old lawyer himself had more than half believed this was all true. He had seen a great many selfish, mercenary people in his life, and he had not a good opinion of Americans. When he had been driven into the cheap street, and his coupé had stopped before the cheap small house, he had felt actually shocked. It seemed really quite dreadful to think that the future owner of Dorincourt Castle and Wyndham Towers and Chorlworth, and all the other stately splendours, should have been born and brought up in an insignificant house in a street with a sort of greengrocery at the corner. He wondered what kind of a child he would be, and what kind of a mother he had. He rather shrank from seeing them both. He had a sort of pride in the noble family whose legal affairs he had conducted so long, and it would have annoyed him very much to have found himself obliged to manage a woman who would seem to him a vulgar, money-loving person, with no respect for her dead husband’s country and the dignity of his name. It was a very old name and a very splendid one, and Mr Havisham had a great respect for it himself though he was only a cold, keen business-like old lawyer.
When Mary handed him into the small parlour he looked around it critically. It was plainly furnished, but it had a home-like look; there were no cheap, common ornaments, and no cheap, gaudy pictures; the few adornments on the walls were in good taste, and about the room were many pretty things which a woman’s hand might