be invited to
call on a stout, respectable man who owned a corner store, and even had
a horse and wagon, seemed to him quite an event.

"Do you know anything about earls and castles?" Mr. Hobbs inquired. "I'd
like to know more of the particklars."

"There's a story about some on 'em in the Penny Story Gazette," said
Dick. "It's called the 'Crime of a Coronet; or, The Revenge of the
Countess May.' It's a boss thing, too. Some of us boys 're takin' it to
read."

"Bring it up when you come," said Mr. Hobbs, "an' I'll pay for it. Bring
all you can find that have any earls in 'em. If there are n't earls,
markises'll do, or dooks--though HE never made mention of any dooks or
markises. We did go over coronets a little, but I never happened to see
any. I guess they don't keep 'em 'round here."

"Tiffany 'd have 'em if anybody did," said Dick, "but I don't know as
I'd know one if I saw it."

Mr. Hobbs did not explain that he would not have known one if he saw it.
He merely shook his head ponderously.

"I s'pose there is very little call for 'em," he said, and that ended
the matter.

This was the beginning of quite a substantial friendship. When Dick went
up to the store, Mr. Hobbs received him with great hospitality. He gave
him a chair tilted against the door, near a barrel of apples, and after
his young visitor was seated, he made a jerk at them with the hand in
which he held his pipe, saying:

"Help yerself."

Then he looked at the story papers, and after that they read and
discussed the British aristocracy; and Mr. Hobbs smoked his pipe very
hard and shook his head a great deal. He shook it most when he pointed
out the high stool with the marks on its legs.

"There's his very kicks," he said impressively; "his very kicks. I sit
and look at 'em by the hour. This is a world of ups an' it's a world of
downs. Why, he'd set there, an' eat crackers out of a box, an' apples
out of a barrel, an' pitch his cores into the street; an' now he's a
lord a-livin' in a castle. Them's a lord's kicks; they'll be a earl's
kicks some day. Sometimes I says to myself, says I, 'Well, I'll be
jiggered!'"

He seemed to derive a great deal of comfort from his reflections and
Dick's visit. Before Dick went home, they had a supper in the small
back-room; they had crackers and cheese and sardines, and other canned
things out of the store, and Mr. Hobbs solemnly opened two bottles of
ginger ale, and pouring out two glasses, proposed a toa