Oldal 159 [159]
LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY 139
a me
end of the village. The houses are close together, and almost falling
down; you can scarcely breathe; and the people are so poor, and
everything is dreadful! Often they have fever, and the children die;
and it makes them wicked to live like that, and be so poor and
miserable! It is worse than Michael and Bridget! The rain comes
in at the roof! Dearest went to see a poor woman who lived there.
She would not let me come near her until she had changed all
her things. The tears ran down her cheeks when she told me
about it!”
The tears had come into his own eyes, but he smiled through
them.
“TY told her you did nt know, and I would tell you,” he said.
He jumped down and came and leaned against the Earl’s chair.
“You can make it all right,” he said, “just as you made it all
right for Higgins. You always make it all right for everybody. I
told her you would, and that Newick must have forgotten to
tell you.”
The Earl looked down at the hand on his knee. Newick had
not forgotten to tell him; in fact, Newick had spoken to him more
than once of the desperate condition of the end of the village known
as Earl’s Court. He knew all about the tumble-down, miserable cot¬
tages, and the bad drainage, and the damp walls and broken win¬
dows and leaking roofs, and all about the poverty, the fever, and the
misery. Mr. Mordaunt had painted it all to him in the strongest
words he could use, and his lordship had used violent language in
response; and, when his gout had been at the worst, he said that
the sooner the people of Earl’s Court died and were buried by the
parish the better it would be,—and there was an end of the matter.
And yet, as he looked at the small hand on his knee, and from the
small hand to the honest, earnest, frank-eyed face, he was actually a
little ashamed both of Earl’s Court and himself.