Ben walked up to him and took his hand, and his own was trembling.
“Yes,” he said, “I could swear to him, too. Tom,” he said to the little fellow, “I’m your father; I’ve come to take you away. Where’s your hat?”
The boy pointed to where it lay on a chair. It evidently rather pleased him to hear that he was going away. He had been so accustomed to queer experiences that it did not surprise him to be told by a stranger that he was his father. He objected so much to the woman who had come a few months before to the place where he had lived since his babyhood, and who had suddenly announced that she was his mother, that he was quite ready for a change. Ben took up the hat and marched to the door.
“If you want me again,” he said to Mr. Havisham, “you know where to find me.”
He walked out of the room, holding the child’s hand and not looking at the woman once. She was fairly raving with fury, and the Earl was calmly gazing at her through his eyeglasses, which he had quietly placed upon his aristocratic, eagle nose.
“Come, come, my young woman,” said Mr. Havisham. “This won’t do at all. If you don’t want to be locked up, you really must behave yourself.”
And there was something so very businesslike in his tones that, probably feeling that the safest thing she could do would be to get out of the way, she gave him one savage look and dashed past him into the next room and slammed the door.
“We shall have no more trouble with her,” said Mr. Havisham.
And he was right; for that very night she left the Dorincourt Arms and took the train to London, and was seen no more.
When the Earl left the room after the interview, he went at once to his carriage.
“To Court Lodge,” he said to Thomas.
“To Court Lodge,” said Thomas to the coachman as he mounted the box; “an’ you may depend on it, things are taking a uniggspected turn.”
When the carriage stopped at Court Lodge, Cedric was in the drawing-room with his mother.
The Earl came in without being announced. He looked an inch or so taller, and a great many years younger. His deep eyes flashed.
“Where,” he said, “is Lord Fauntleroy?”
Mrs. Errol came forward, a flush rising to her cheek.
“Is it Lord Fauntleroy?” she asked. “Is it, indeed!”
The Earl put out his hand and grasped hers.
“Yes,” he answered, “it is.”
Then he put his other hand on Cedric’s shoulder.
“Fauntleroy,” he said in his unceremonious, authoritative way, “ask your mother when she will come to us at the Castle.”
Fauntleroy flung his arms around his mother’s neck.
“To live with us!” he cried. “To live with us always!”
The Earl looked at Mrs. Errol, and Mrs. Errol looked at the Earl.
His lordship was entirely in earnest. He had made up his mind to waste no time in arranging this matter. He had begun to think it would suit him to make friends with his heir’s mother.
“Are you quite sure you want me?” said Mrs. Errol, with her soft, pretty smile.
“Quite sure,” he said bluntly. “We have always wanted you, but we were not exactly aware of it. We hope you will come.”
XV
Ben took his boy and went back to his cattle ranch in California, and he returned under very comfortable circumstances. Just before his going, Mr. Havisham had an interview with him in which the lawyer told him that the Earl of Dorincourt wished to do something for the boy who might have turned out to be Lord Fauntleroy, and so he had decided that it would be a good plan to invest in a cattle ranch of his own, and put Ben in charge of it on terms which would make it pay him very well, and which would lay a foundation for his son’s future. And so when Ben went away, he went as the prospective master of a ranch which would be almost as good as his own, and might easily become his own in time, as indeed it did in the course of a few years; and Tom, the boy, grew up on it into a fine young man and was devotedly fond of his father; and they were so successful and happy that Ben used to say that Tom made up to him for all the troubles he had ever had.
But Dick and Mr. Hobbs—who had actually come over with the others to see that things were properly looked after—did not return for some time. It had been decided at the outset that the Earl would provide for Dick, and would see that he received a solid education; and Mr. Hobbs had decided that as he himself had left a reliable substitute in charge of his store, he could afford to wait to see the festivities which were to celebrate Lord Fauntleroy’s eighth birthday. All the tenantry were invited, and there were to be feasting and dancing and games in the park, and bonfires and fireworks in the evening.
“Just like the Fourth of July!” said Lord Fauntleroy. “It seems a pity my birthday wasn’t on the Fourth, doesn’t it? For then we could keep them both together.”
It must be confessed that at first the Earl and Mr. Hobbs were not as intimate as it might have been hoped they would become, in the interests of the British aristocracy. The fact was that the Earl had known very few grocery-men, and Mr. Hobbs had not had many very close acquaintances who were earls; and so in their rare interviews conversation did not flourish. It must also be owned that Mr. Hobbs had been rather overwhelmed by the splendors Fauntleroy felt it his duty to show him.
The entrance gate and the stone lions and the avenue impressed
