Oldal 225 [225]
LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY 205
more pleased with his sons wife. It was true, as the people said,
that he was beginning to like her too. He liked to hear her sweet
voice and to see her sweet face; and as he sat in his arm-chair, he
used to watch her and listen as she talked to her boy; and he heard
loving, gentle words which were new to him, and he began to see
why the little fellow who had lived in a New York side street and
known grocery-men and made friends with boot-blacks, was still so
well-bred and manly a little fellow that he made no one ashamed of
him, even when fortune changed him into the heir to an English
earldom, living in an English castle.
It was really a very simple thing, after all,—it was only that he
had lived near a kindand gentle heart, and had been taught to think
kind thoughts always and to care for others. It is a very little thing,
perhaps, but it is the best thing of all. He knew nothing of earls
and castles; he was quite ignorant of all grand and splendid things ;
but he was always lovable because he was simple and loving. To be
so 1s like being born a king.
As the old Earl of Dorincourt looked at him that day, moving
about the park among the people, talking to those he knew and
making his ready little bow when any one greeted him, entertaining
his friends Dick and Mr. Hobbs, or standing near his mother or Miss
Herbert listening to their conversation, the old nobleman was very
well satisfied with him. And he had never been better satisfied than
he was when they went down to the biggest tent, where the more
important tenants of the Dorincourt estate were sitting down to the
grand collation of the day.
They were drinking toasts; and, after they had drunk the
health of the Earl, with much more enthusiasm than his name had
ever been greeted with before, they proposed the health of “ Little
Lord Fauntleroy.” And if there had ever been any doubt at all as to
whether his lordship was popular or not, it would have been settled