Stranica 183 [183]
XI
"THEN Mr. Hobbs’s young friend left him to go to Dorin¬
\ \ / court Castle and become Lord Fauntleroy, and the
grocery-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 many acquaintances. He was not mentally
energetic enough to know how to amuse himself, and in truth he
never did anything of an entertaining nature but read the news¬
papers 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 Fauntleroy, 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, and he and Mr. Hobbs had held
such long conversations about the Revolution and the British and
the elections and the Republican party, 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 some day he would look up from his paper and see the
little lad standing in the door-way, in his white suit and red stockings,
and with his straw hat on the back of his head, and would hear him
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