“Who is your grandfather?” he asked.

Cedric put his hand in his pocket and carefully drew out a piece of paper, on which something was written in his own round, irregular hand.

“I couldn’t easily remember it, so I wrote it down on this,” he said.  And he read aloud slowly:  “’John Arthur Molyneux Errol, Earl of Dorincourt.’  That is his name, and he lives in a castle—­in two or three castles, I think.  And my papa, who died, was his youngest son; and I shouldn’t have been a lord or an earl if my papa hadn’t died; and my papa wouldn’t have been an earl if his two brothers hadn’t died.  But they all died, and there is no one but me,—­no boy,—­and so I have to be one; and my grandpapa has sent for me to come to England.”

Mr. Hobbs seemed to grow hotter and hotter.  He mopped his forehead and his bald spot and breathed hard.  He began to see that something very remarkable had happened; but when he looked at the little boy sitting on the cracker-box, with the innocent, anxious expression in his childish eyes, and saw that he was not changed at all, but was simply as he had been the day before, just a handsome, cheerful, brave little fellow in a blue suit and red neck-ribbon, all this information about the nobility bewildered him.  He was all the more bewildered because Cedric gave it with such ingenuous simplicity, and plainly without realizing himself how stupendous it was.

“Wha—­what did you say your name was?” Mr. Hobbs inquired.

“It’s Cedric Errol, Lord Fauntleroy,” answered Cedric.  “That was what Mr. Havisham called me.  He said when I went into the room:  ’And so this is little Lord Fauntleroy!’”

“Well,” said Mr. Hobbs, “I’ll be—­jiggered!”

This was an exclamation he always used when he was very much astonished or excited.  He could think of nothing else to say just at that puzzling moment.

Cedric felt it to be quite a proper and suitable ejaculation.  His respect and affection for Mr. Hobbs were so great that he admired and approved of all his remarks.  He had not seen enough of society as yet to make him realize that sometimes Mr. Hobbs was not quite conventional.  He knew, of course, that he was different from his mamma, but, then, his mamma was a lady, and he had an idea that ladies were always different from gentlemen.

He looked at Mr. Hobbs wistfully.

“England is a long way off, isn’t it?” he asked.

“It’s across the Atlantic Ocean,” Mr. Hobbs answered.

“That’s the worst of it,” said Cedric.  “Perhaps I shall not see you again for a long time.  I don’t like to think of that, Mr. Hobbs.”

“The best of friends must part,” said Mr. Hobbs.

“Well,” said Cedric, “we have been friends for a great many years, haven’t we?”

“Ever since you was born,” Mr. Hobbs answered.  “You was about six weeks old when you was first walked out on this street.”

“Ah,” remarked Cedric, with a sigh, “I never thought I should have to be an earl then!”