He bent down and stood a minute or so looking at the happy, sleeping face. He put up his hand, pushed the bright hair back from the forehead, and then turned away and rang the bell.
When the footman appeared, he pointed to the sofa.
“Take”—he said, and then his voice changed a little—“take Lord Fauntleroy to his room.”
CHAPTER XI.
ANXIETY IN AMERICA.
When Mr. Hobbs’s young friend left him to go to Dorincourt Castle and become Lord Fauntleroy, and the grocery-man had time to realise that the Atlantic Ocean lay between himself and the small companion who had spent so many agreeable hours in his society, he began to feel very lonely indeed. At first it seemed to Mr. Hobbs that Cedric was not really far away, and would come back again; that some day he would look up from his paper and see the lad standing in the doorway, in his white suit and red stockings, and with his straw hat on the back of his head, and would hear him say in his cheerful little voice: “Hello, Mr. Hobbs! This is a hot day—isn’t it?” But as the days passed on and this did not happen, Mr. Hobbs felt very dull and uneasy. He did not even enjoy his newspaper as much as he used to. He would take out his gold watch and open it and stare at the inscription; “From his oldest friend, Lord Fauntleroy, to Mr. Hobbs. When this you see, remember me.” At night, when the store was closed, he would light his pipe and walk slowly along until he reached the house where Cedric had lived, on which there was a sign [that read,] “This House to Let”; and he would stop near it and look up and shake his head, and puff at his pipe very hard, and after a while walk mournfully back again.
This went on for two or three weeks before a new idea came to him. He would go to see Dick. He smoked a great many pipes before he arrived at the conclusion, but finally he did arrive at it. He would go to see Dick. He knew all about Dick. Cedric had told him, and his idea was that perhaps Dick might be some comfort to him in the way of talking things over.
So one day when Dick was very hard at work blacking a customer’s boots, a short, stout man with a heavy face and a bald head, stared for two or three minutes at the bootblack’s sign, which read:
“Professor Dick Tipton
Can’t be beat.”
He stared at it so long that Dick began to take a lively interest in him, and when he had put the finishing touch to his customer’s boots, he said: