at Mr. Hobbs wistfully.

"England is a long way off, isn't it?" he asked.

"It's across the Atlantic Ocean," Mr. Hobbs answered.

"That's the worst of it," said Cedric. "Perhaps I shall not see you
again for a long time. I don't like to think of that, Mr. Hobbs."

"The best of friends must part," said Mr. Hobbs.

"Well," said Cedric, "we have been friends for a great many years,
haven't we?"

"Ever since you was born," Mr. Hobbs answered. "You was about six weeks
old when you was first walked out on this street."

"Ah," remarked Cedric, with a sigh, "I never thought I should have to be
an earl then!"

"You think," said Mr. Hobbs, "there's no getting out of it?"

"I'm afraid not," answered Cedric. "My mamma says that my papa would
wish me to do it. But if I have to be an earl, there's one thing I can
do: I can try to be a good one. I'm not going to be a tyrant. And if
there is ever to be another war with America, I shall try to stop it."

His conversation with Mr. Hobbs was a long and serious one. Once having
got over the first shock, Mr. Hobbs was not so rancorous as might have
been expected; he endeavored to resign himself to the situation, and
before the interview was at an end he had asked a great many questions.
As Cedric could answer but few of them, he endeavored to answer
them himself, and, being fairly launched on the subject of earls and
marquises and lordly estates, explained many things in a way which would
probably have astonished Mr. Havisham, could that gentleman have heard
it.

But then there were many things which astonished Mr. Havisham. He had
spent all his life in England, and was not accustomed to American people
and American habits. He had been connected professionally with the
family of the Earl of Dorincourt for nearly forty years, and he knew all
about its grand estates and its great wealth and importance; and, in a
cold, business-like way, he felt an interest in this little boy, who, in
the future, was to be the master and owner of them all,--the future Earl
of Dorincourt. He had known all about the old Earl's disappointment
in his elder sons and all about his fierce rage at Captain Cedric's
American marriage, and he knew how he still hated the gentle little
widow and would not speak of her except with bitter and cruel words. He
insisted that she was only a common American girl, who had entrapped
his son into marrying her because she knew he was an earl's son. The
old lawyer himsel