Chapter 11 When Mr.
Hobbs' young friend left him to go to Dorincourt Castle and become Lord Fauntleroy,
And the grocer 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 any acquaintances.
He was not mentally energetic enough to know how to amuse himself.
And in truth,
He never did anything of the 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 Fauntly Roy,
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.
That he and Mr.
Hobbs had held long conversations about the Revolution and the British.
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 someday he would look up from his paper and see the little lad standing in the doorway.
In his white suit and red stockings,
And with his straw hat on the back of his head.
And what here I'm saying is 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 lone 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 seemed that even youthful earls kicked 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 a while,
He would shut it up with a loud snap and sigh and get up and go and stand in the doorway 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 planned slowly and deliberately dawned upon him.
He would go to see Dick.
He smoked a great many pipes before he arrived at that 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 boot black 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 to 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 of mine,
Said Dick.
A little feller.
He gave me the whole outfit.
He was the best little fella you ever saw.
He's in England now.
Gone to be one of the Lords.
Lord.
Lord Fauntleroy?
Going to be Earl of Dorincourt?
" asked Mr.
Hobbs.
Dick almost dropped his brush.
Why boss?
He exclaimed.
Did you know him yourself?
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 were his words,
And I'd remembered them.
He went on shaking his head.
If he hadn't given me a thing and I hadn't seen him ever again.
He was a companion as any man would remember.
He was the nicest little feller I ever saw said Dick.
And as to sand,
I never even seen sand to a little fella.
I thought a heap of him,
I did,
And we was friends,
Too.
He was sort of chums from the first,
That little young'un in me.
I grabbed his ball from under a stage for him,
And he never forgot it.
And he came down here,
He would,
With his mother or his nurse,
And he'd holler,
Hello,
Dick,
At me,
As friendly as if he was six feet high.
He was a gay little chap.
And when he 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 an earl out of him.
He would have shown in the grocery business,
Or dry goods either.
He would have shown.
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 once,
And so it was agreed that the next day Dick might 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 himself to sleep under a roof instead of out in the streets,
And he had begun to hope he might reach even a higher place 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 particulars.
There's a story about some of them in Penny Story Gazette,
Said Dick.
It's called the crime of the coronet.
Or the revenge of the Countess May.
It's a boss thing too.
Some of us boys are taking it to read.
Bring it up when you come,
Said Mr.
Hobbs,
And I'll pay for it.
Bring all you can find,
Anything that has earls in them.
If there aren't earls,
Marquis,
Or dukes,
Though he never made mention of any dukes or marquis.
We did go over coronets a little,
But I never happened to see any.
I guess they don't keep them around here.
And this was the beginning of a quite 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 the pipe,
Saying,
Help yourself.
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 the legs.
There's his very kicks,
He said impressively.
His very kicks.
I sit and look at him by the hour.
This is a world of ups,
And it's a world of downs.
Why,
He'd sit there and eat crackers out of a box,
And apples out of a barrel,
And pitch his cores into the street.
And now he's living a lord in a castle.
Them's a Lord's kicks.
There'll be an Earl's kick someday.
Sometimes I say to myself,
Says I,
Well,
I'll be jiggered.
He seemed to derive a great deal of comfort from his reflections and Dick's visits.
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.
And may ye teach him a lesson.
Earls and Marquis and Dukes and all.
After that night,
The two saw each other often,
And Mr.
Hobbs was much more comfortable and less desolate.
They read the Penny Store 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 bookstore downtown 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.
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 Marquis then,
Or Dukes.
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 do.
Mr.
Hobbs said it would.
If he could not get an entire volume devoted to earls.
So the clerk sold him a book called The Tower of London,
Written by Mr.
Harrison Ainsworth,
And he carried it home.
When Dick came,
They began to read it.
It was a very wonderful and exciting book.
And the scene was laid in the reign of the famous English Queen.
Named Queen Mary.
And has Mr.
Hobbs heard of Queen Mary's?
And as Mr.
Hobbs heard of Queen Mary's uncomfortable deeds,
He began to get much excited.
He took the pipe out of his mouth and stared at Dick.
And at last he was obliged to mop the perspiration from his brow with his red pocket handkerchief.
Why?
He ain't safe,
He said.
He's not safe at all.
If a woman who sits on the thrones can do that,
Just imagine what a man can do.
Well,
Said Dick,
Though he looked rather anxious himself.
You see,
This was one of those long ago things.
It's not happening now.
I know her name's Victoria.
The Queen Now,
And in this book,
Her name's Mary.
So it is,
Said Mr.
Hobbs,
Still mopping his forehead.
So it is.
And the newspapers aren't saying anything about all that.
But it still doesn't seem as if it was safe for him over there with all those queer folks.
Why?
They tell me they don't keep the 4th of July.
He was privately uneasy for several days,
And it was not until he received Fauntleroy's letter and had read it several times,
Both to himself and to Dick,
And had also read the letter Dick got about the same time,
That he became composed again.
But they both found great pleasure in their letters.
They read and reread them.
And talked them over and enjoyed every word of them.
And they spent days over the answers they sent and read them almost as if the letters had been received.
It was rather a labor for Dick to write his.
All his knowledge of reading and writing he had gained during a few months when he had lived with his elder brother and had gone to night school.
But being a sharp boy,
He had made the most of that brief education and had spelled out things in newspapers since then.
And practice writing with bits of chalk on pavements or walls or fences.
He told Mr.
Hobbs all about his life and about his elder brother,
Who had been rather good to him after their mother passed away,
When Dick was a little fellow.
Their father had died sometime before.
The brother's name was Ben.
And he had taken care of Dick as well as he could.
Until the boy was old enough to sell newspapers and run errands.
They had lived together,
And as he grew older,
Ben had managed to get along until he had quite a decent place in the store.
And then exclaimed Dick with disgust.
Bless if he didn't get married to a gal.
Just went and got spoony and hadn't any more sense left.
Married her,
And set up housekeeping in two back rooms.
And a hefty one she was,
A regular tiger cat.
She'd tear things to pieces when she got mad,
And she was mad all the time.
Had a baby just like her.
Yelled day and night.
My brother ended up going out west to make more money for her.
He often told Mr.
Hobbs stories of her and his brother Ben,
Who since had gone out west,
Had written once or twice to Dick.
Ben's luck had not been good,
And he had wandered from place to place,
But at last he had settled on a ranch in California.
Where he was at work at the time when Dick became acquainted with Mr.
Hobbs.
That gal,
Said Dick one day,
She took all the grit out of him.
She left him and I couldn't help feeling sorry for him sometimes.
They were sitting in the store doorway together and Mr.
Hobbs was filling his pipe.
He oughtn't to have married,
He said solemnly,
As he rose to get a match.
Women.
I could never see any use in them myself.
As he took the match from its box,
He stopped and looked down on the counter.
Why?
He said.
If here isn't a letter.
I didn't see it before.
The postman must have laid it down when I wasn't noticing,
Or the newspaper slipped over it.
He picked it up and looked at it carefully.
It's from him!
" he exclaimed.
That's the very one it's from.
He forgot his pipe altogether.
He went back to his chair quite excited,
And he took his pocket knife and opened the letter.
I wonder what news there is this time,
He said.
And then he unfolded the letter and read it as follows.
Dorincourt Castle My Dear Mr.
Hobbs I write this in a great hurry,
Because I have something curious to tell you that I know you'd be much surprised.
It is all a mistake,
And I am not a lord,
And I shall not have to be an earl.
There is a lady which was married to my uncle Beavis,
Who is gone now,
And she is a little boy,
And he is the Lord Fauntleroy,
Because that is the way it is in England.
The Earl's eldest son's little boy is the Earl,
If everyone else is gone.
I mean,
If his father and grandfather are gone,
My grandfather's not gone yet,
But my Uncle Beavis is,
And so his boy is Lord Fauntly Roy,
And I am not because my papa was the youngest son,
And my name is Cedric Errol,
Like it was when I was in New York,
And all the things will belong to the other boy.
I thought at first I should have to give him my pony and my cart,
But my grandfather says I need not.
My grandfather is sorry and I don't think he likes the lady,
But perhaps he thinks Dyrus and I are sorry because I shall not be Earl.
I would like to be an Earl now better than I thought I would at first because this is a beautiful castle and I like everybody.
So when you are rich,
You can do many things.
I am not rich now because when your papa is only the youngest son,
He's not very rich.
And I'm going to learn to work so that I can take care of dearest.
I have been asking Wilkins about grooming horses.
Perhaps I might be a groom or a coachman.
The lady brought her little boy to the castle,
And my grandfather and Mr.
Havisham talked to her.
I think she was angry because she talked loud.
And my grandfather was angry too.
I never saw him angry before.
I wish it did not make them mad.
I thought I would tell you and Dick right away,
Because you'd be interested.
So no more at present,
With love from.
Your old friend.
Cedric Errol not Lord Fauntleroy.
Mr.
Hobbs fell back in his chair,
The letter dropped to his knee.
His penknife slipped to the floor,
And so did the envelope.
Well,
He said,
I am jiggered.
He was so dumbfounded that he actually changed his exclamation.
It had always been his habit to say,
I will be jiggered,
But this time he said,
I am jiggered.
Perhaps he really was jiggered.
There is no knowing.
Well,
Said Dick,
The whole thing's bust up,
Hasn't it?
Bust,
" said Mr.
Hobbs.
It's my opinion it's put a job on the British aristocrats to rob him of his rights because he's an American.
They've had a spite against us ever since the revolution,
And they're taking it out on him.
I told you he wasn't safe.
And see what's happened?
Like as not,
The whole governments got together to rob him of his lawful onens.
He was very much agitated.
He had not approved of the change in his young friend's circumstances at first.
But lately he'd become more reconciled to it.
And after the receipt of Cedric's letter,
He had perhaps even felt some secret pride in his young friend's magnificence.
He might not have a good opinion of Earls.
But he knew that even in America,
Money was considered rather an agreeable thing.
And if all the wealth and grandeur were to go with the title.
It must be rather hard to lose it.
They're trying to rob him,
He said,
That's what they're doing.
And folks that have money ought to look after him.
And he kept dick with him until quite a late hour to talk it over.
And when that young man left,
He went with them to the corner of the street.
And on his way back he stopped opposite the empty house for some time,
Staring at the two-let sign,
Smoking his pipe,
In much disturbance of mind.
