f
it, Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Havisham came all the way from England to tell us
about it. My grandpapa sent him."

Mr. Hobbs stared wildly at the innocent, serious little face before him.

"Who is your grandfather?" he asked.

Cedric put his hand in his pocket and carefully drew out a piece of
paper, on which something was written in his own round, irregular hand.

"I couldn't easily remember it, so I wrote it down on this," he
said. And he read aloud slowly: "'John Arthur Molyneux Errol, Earl of
Dorincourt.' That is his name, and he lives in a castle--in two or three
castles, I think. And my papa, who died, was his youngest son; and I
shouldn't have been a lord or an earl if my papa hadn't died; and my
papa wouldn't have been an earl if his two brothers hadn't died. But
they all died, and there is no one but me,--no boy,--and so I have to be
one; and my grandpapa has sent for me to come to England."

Mr. Hobbs seemed to grow hotter and hotter. He mopped his forehead and
his bald spot and breathed hard. He began to see that something very
remarkable had happened; but when he looked at the little boy sitting on
the cracker-box, with the innocent, anxious expression in his childish
eyes, and saw that he was not changed at all, but was simply as he had
been the day before, just a handsome, cheerful, brave little fellow in
a blue suit and red neck-ribbon, all this information about the nobility
bewildered him. He was all the more bewildered because Cedric gave it
with such ingenuous simplicity, and plainly without realizing himself
how stupendous it was.

"Wha--what did you say your name was?" Mr. Hobbs inquired.

"It's Cedric Errol, Lord Fauntleroy," answered Cedric. "That was what
Mr. Havisham called me. He said when I went into the room: 'And so this
is little Lord Fauntleroy!'"

"Well," said Mr. Hobbs, "I'll be--jiggered!"

This was an exclamation he always used when he was very much astonished
or excited. He could think of nothing else to say just at that puzzling
moment.

Cedric felt it to be quite a proper and suitable ejaculation. His
respect and affection for Mr. Hobbs were so great that he admired and
approved of all his remarks. He had not seen enough of society as yet to
make him realize that sometimes Mr. Hobbs was not quite conventional.
He knew, of course, that he was different from his mamma, but, then, his
mamma was a lady, and he had an idea that ladies were always different
from gentlemen.

He looked