When she opened the door of the room, he stood upon the threshold and looked about him in amazement. He did not speak; he only put his hands in his pockets and stood there looking in.
The room was a large one too, as all the rooms seemed to be, and it appeared to him more beautiful than the rest, only in a different way. The furniture was not so massive and antique as was that in the rooms he had seen down stairs; the draperies and [rugs] and walls were brighter; there were shelves full of books, and on the tables were numbers of toys—beautiful, ingenious things—such as he had looked at with wonder and delight through the shop windows in New York.
“It looks like a boy’s room,” he said at last, [catching his breath a little.] “Who do they belong to?”
“Go and look at them,” said Dawson. “They belong to you!”
“To me!” he cried “to me! Why do they belong to me? Who gave them to me?” And he sprang forward with a gay little shout. It seemed almost too much to be believed. “It was Grandpapa!” he said, with his eyes as bright as stars. “I know it was Grandpapa!”
“Yes, it was his lordship,” said Dawson.
It was a tremendously exciting morning. There were so many things to be examined, so many experiments to be tried; each novelty was so absorbing that he could scarcely turn from it to look at the next.
The Earl had passed a bad night and had spent the morning in his room; but at noon, after he had lunched, he sent for his grandson.
Fauntleroy answered the summons at once. He came down the broad staircase with a bounding step; the Earl heard him run across the hall, and then the door opened and he came in with red cheeks and sparkling eyes.
“I was waiting for you to send for me,” he said. “I was ready a long time ago. I’m [ever so much] obliged to you for all those things! I’m ever so much obliged to you! I have been playing with them all the morning.”