have so many things
to tell me! and we shall be so happy together! It is a beautiful place.
Your papa has often told me about it. He loved it very much; and you
will love it too."

"I should love it better if you were there," his small lordship said,
with a heavy little sigh.

He could not but feel puzzled by so strange a state of affairs, which
could put his "Dearest" in one house and himself in another.

The fact was that Mrs. Errol had thought it better not to tell him why
this plan had been made.

"I should prefer he should not be told," she said to Mr. Havisham. "He
would not really understand; he would only be shocked and hurt; and
I feel sure that his feeling for the Earl will be a more natural and
affectionate one if he does not know that his grandfather dislikes me so
bitterly. He has never seen hatred or hardness, and it would be a great
blow to him to find out that any one could hate me. He is so loving
himself, and I am so dear to him! It is better for him that he should
not be told until he is much older, and it is far better for the Earl.
It would make a barrier between them, even though Ceddie is such a
child."

So Cedric only knew that there was some mysterious reason for the
arrangement, some reason which he was not old enough to understand, but
which would be explained when he was older. He was puzzled; but, after
all, it was not the reason he cared about so much; and after many talks
with his mother, in which she comforted him and placed before him the
bright side of the picture, the dark side of it gradually began to fade
out, though now and then Mr. Havisham saw him sitting in some queer
little old-fashioned attitude, watching the sea, with a very grave face,
and more than once he heard an unchildish sigh rise to his lips.

"I don't like it," he said once as he was having one of his almost
venerable talks with the lawyer. "You don't know how much I don't like
it; but there are a great many troubles in this world, and you have
to bear them. Mary says so, and I've heard Mr. Hobbs say it too. And
Dearest wants me to like to live with my grandpapa, because, you see,
all his children are dead, and that's very mournful. It makes you
sorry for a man, when all his children have died--and one was killed
suddenly."

One of the things which always delighted the people who made the
acquaintance of his young lordship was the sage little air he wore
at times when he gave himself up to conversation;--com