OCR Output

LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY 133

‘“ Do you miss your mother very much?” asked the Earl when he
had finished reading this.

“Yes,” said Fauntleroy, "1 miss her all the time.”

He went and stood before the Earl and put his hand on his
knee, looking up at him.

‘You don't miss her, do you?” he said.

‘I don’t know her,” answered his lordship rather crustily.

‘“T know that,” said Fauntleroy, "and. that ’s what makes me
wonder. She told me not to ask you any questions, and—and I
wont, but sometimes | can’t help thinking, you know, and it makes
me all puzzled. But I ’m not going to ask any questions. And
when | miss her very much, I go and look out of my window to
where I see her light shine for me every night through an open
place in the trees. It is a long way off, but she puts it in her
window as soon as it is dark, and I can see it twinkle far away, and I
know what it says.” |

“What does it say?” asked my lord.

“It says, ‘Good-night, God keep you all the night! ’— just what
she used to say when we were together. Every night she used to
say that to me, and every morning she said, ‘God bless you all the
day!’ So you see I am quite safe all the time fi

‘Quite, I have no doubt,” said his lordship dryly. And he drew
down his beetling eyebrows and looked at the little boy so fixedly
and so long that Fauntleroy wondered what he could be thinking of.