nd I have been thinking about her!"

"Oh!" said the Earl. "You have, have you? Ring the bell."

As they drove down the avenue, under the arching trees, he was rather
silent. But Fauntleroy was not. He talked about the pony. What color was
it? How big was it? What was its name? What did it like to eat best? How
old was it? How early in the morning might he get up and see it?

"Dearest will be so glad!" he kept saying. "She will be so much obliged
to you for being so kind to me! She knows I always liked ponies so much,
but we never thought I should have one. There was a little boy on Fifth
Avenue who had one, and he used to ride out every morning and we used to
take a walk past his house to see him."

He leaned back against the cushions and regarded the Earl with rapt
interest for a few minutes and in entire silence.

"I think you must be the best person in the world," he burst forth at
last. "You are always doing good, aren't you?--and thinking about other
people. Dearest says that is the best kind of goodness; not to think
about yourself, but to think about other people. That is just the way
you are, isn't it?"

His lordship was so dumfounded to find himself presented in such
agreeable colors, that he did not know exactly what to say. He felt that
he needed time for reflection. To see each of his ugly, selfish motives
changed into a good and generous one by the simplicity of a child was a
singular experience.

Fauntleroy went on, still regarding him with admiring eyes--those great,
clear, innocent eyes!

"You make so many people happy," he said. "There's Michael and Bridget
and their ten children, and the apple-woman, and Dick, and Mr.
Hobbs, and Mr. Higgins and Mrs. Higgins and their children, and Mr.
Mordaunt,--because of course he was glad,--and Dearest and me, about
the pony and all the other things. Do you know, I've counted it up on
my fingers and in my mind, and it's twenty-seven people you've been kind
to. That's a good many--twenty-seven!"

"And I was the person who was kind to them--was I?" said the Earl.

"Why, yes, you know," answered Fauntleroy. "You made them all happy.
Do you know," with some delicate hesitation, "that people are sometimes
mistaken about earls when they don't know them. Mr. Hobbs was. I am
going to write him, and tell him about it."

"What was Mr. Hobbs's opinion of earls?" asked his lordship.

"Well, you see, the difficulty was," replied his young companion,
"that he didn't