a friend o' mine," said Dick,--"a little feller. He guv' me the
whole outfit. He was the best little feller ye ever saw. He's in England
now. Gone to be one o' them lords."

"Lord--Lord--" asked Mr. Hobbs, with ponderous slowness, "Lord
Fauntleroy--Goin' to be Earl of Dorincourt?"

Dick almost dropped his brush.

"Why, boss!" he exclaimed, "d' ye know him yerself?"

"I've known him," answered Mr. Hobbs, wiping his warm forehead, "ever
since he was born. We was lifetime acquaintances--that's what WE was."

It really made him feel quite agitated to speak of it. He pulled the
splendid gold watch out of his pocket and opened it, and showed the
inside of the case to Dick.

"'When this you see, remember me,'" he read. "That was his parting
keepsake to me 'I don't want you to forget me'--those was his words--I'd
ha' remembered him," he went on, shaking his head, "if he hadn't given
me a thing an' I hadn't seen hide nor hair on him again. He was a
companion as ANY man would remember."

"He was the nicest little feller I ever see," said Dick. "An' as to
sand--I never seen so much sand to a little feller. I thought a heap
o' him, I did,--an' we was friends, too--we was sort o' chums from the
fust, that little young un an' me. I grabbed his ball from under a stage
fur him, an' he never forgot it; an' he'd come down here, he would,
with his mother or his nuss and he'd holler: 'Hello, Dick!' at me,
as friendly as if he was six feet high, when he warn't knee high to a
grasshopper, and was dressed in gal's clo'es. He was a gay little chap,
and when you was down on your luck, it did you good to talk to him."

"That's so," said Mr. Hobbs. "It was a pity to make a earl out of HIM.
He would have SHONE in the grocery business--or dry goods either; he
would have SHONE!" And he shook his head with deeper regret than ever.

It proved that they had so much to say to each other that it was not
possible to say it all at one time, and so it was agreed that the next
night Dick should make a visit to the store and keep Mr. Hobbs company.
The plan pleased Dick well enough. He had been a street waif nearly
all his life, but he had never been a bad boy, and he had always had a
private yearning for a more respectable kind of existence. Since he had
been in business for himself, he had made enough money to enable him to
sleep under a roof instead of out in the streets, and he had begun to
hope he might reach even a higher plane, in time. So, to