Stranica 105 [105]
LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY. 35
‘“ Come here,” he said.
Fauntleroy went to him.
‘I never was away from my own house before,” said the boy,
with a troubled look in his brown eyes. ‘It makes a person feel a
strange feeling when he has to stay all night in another persons
castle instead of in his own house. But Dearest is not very far
away from me. She told me to remember that—and—and I’m
seven —and I can look at the picture she gave me.”
He put his hand in his pocket, and brought out a small violet
velvet-covered case.
“This is it,” he said. ‘You see, you press this spring and it
opens, and she 1s in there!”
He had come close to the Earl's chair, and, as he drew forth
the little case, he leaned against the arm of it, and against the old
man’s arm, too, as confidingly as if children had always leaned
there.
‘There she is,” he said, as the case opened; and he looked up
with a smile.
The Earl knitted his brows; he did not wish to see the picture,
but he looked at it in spite of himself; and there looked up at
him from it such a pretty young face—a face so like the child’s
at his side —that it quite startled him.
‘“T suppose you think you are very fond of her,” he said.
“Yes,” answered Lord Fauntleroy, in a gentle tone, and with
simple directness; "I do think so, and I think it’s true. You see,
Mr. Hobbs was my friend, and Dick and Bridget and Mary and
Michael, they were my friends, too; but Dearest — well, she is my
close friend, and we always tell each other everything. My father
left her to me to take care of, and when Í am a man Í am going to
. work and earn money for her.”
‘What do you think of doing?” inquired his grandfather.