Contradictory as it may seem, there was nothing which entertained and edified him more than the little fellow’s interest in his tenantry.
“There is a place,” said Fauntleroy, looking up at him with wide-open, [horror-stricken] eyes—“Dearest has seen it; it is at the other end of the village. The houses are close together, and almost falling down; you can scarcely breathe: and the people are so poor, and everything is dreadful! The rain comes in at the roof! Dearest went to see a poor woman who lived there. The tears ran down her cheeks when she told me about it!”
The tears had come into his own eyes, but he smiled through them.
“I told her you didn’t know, and I would tell you,” he said. He jumped down and came and leaned against the Earl’s chair. “You can make it all right,” he said, “just as you made it all right for Higgins. You always make it all right for everybody. I told her you would, and that Newick must have forgotten to tell you.”
The Earl looked down at the hand on his knee. Newick had not forgotten to tell him; in fact, Newick had spoken to him more than once of the desperate condition of the end of the village known as Earl’s Court. Mr. Mordaunt had painted it all to him in the strongest words he could use, and his lordship had used violent language in response; and, when his gout had been at the worst, he had said that the sooner the people of Earl’s Court died and were buried by the parish the better it would be—and there was an end of the matter. And yet, as he looked at the small hand on his knee, and from the small hand to the honest, earnest, frank-eyed face, he was actually ashamed both of Earl’s Court and of himself.
“What!” he said; “you want to make a builder of model cottages of me, do you?” And he positively put his own hand upon the childish one and stroked it.
“Those must be pulled down,” said Fauntleroy, with great eagerness. “Dearest says so. Let us—let us go and have them pulled down to-morrow. The people will be so glad when they see you! They’ll know you have come to help them!” And his eyes shone like stars in his glowing face.
The Earl rose from his chair and put his hand on the child’s shoulder. “Let us go out and take our walk on the terrace,” he said, with a short laugh; “and we can talk it over.”
And though he laughed two or three times again, as they walked to and fro on the broad stone terrace, where they walked together almost every fine evening, he seemed to be thinking of something which did not displease him, and still he kept his hand on his small companion’s shoulder.