the last boot was polished, he handed it over to the boy.
“Here’s a paper for you, Dick,” he said; “you can look it over when you drop in at Delmonico’s for your breakfast. Picture of an English castle in it, and an English earl’s daughter-in-law. Fine young woman, too,—lots of hair,—though she seems to be raising rather a row. You ought to become familiar with the nobility and gentry, Dick. Begin on the Right Honorable the Earl of Dorincourt and Lady Fauntleroy. Hello! I say, what’s the matter?”
The pictures he spoke of were on the front page, and Dick was staring at one of them with his eyes and mouth open, and his sharp face almost pale with excitement.
“What’s to pay, Dick?” said the young man. “What has paralyzed you?”
Dick really did look as if something tremendous had happened. He pointed to the picture, under which was written:
“Mother of Claimant (Lady Fauntleroy).”
It was the picture of a handsome woman, with large eyes and heavy braids of black hair wound around her head.
“Her!” said Dick. “My, I know her better ‘n I know you!”
The young man began to laugh.
“Where did you meet her, Dick?” he said. “At Newport? Or when you ran over to Paris the last time?”
Dick actually forgot to grin. He began to gather his brushes and things together, as if he had something to do which would put an end to his business for the present.
“Never mind,” he said. “I know her! An I’ve struck work for this mornin’.”
And in less than five minutes from that time he was tearing through the streets on his way to Mr. Hobbs and the corner store.
Mr. Hobbs could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses when he looked across the counter and saw Dick rush in with the paper in his hand. The boy was out of breath with running; so much out of breath, in fact, that he could scarcely speak as he threw the paper down on the counter.
“Hello!” exclaimed Mr. Hobbs. “Hello! What you got there?”
“Look at it!” panted Dick. “Look at that woman in the picture! That’s what you look at! SHE aint no ‘ristocrat, SHE aint!” with withering scorn. “She’s no lord’s wife. You may eat me, if it aint Minna—MINNA! I’d know her anywheres, an’ so ‘d Ben. Jest ax him.”
Mr. Hobbs dropped into his seat.
“I knowed it was a put-up job,” he said. “I knowed it; and they done it on account o’ him bein’ a ‘Merican!”
“Done it!” cried Dick, with disgust. “SHE done it, that’s who done it. She was allers up to her tricks; an’ I’ll tell yer wot come to me, the minnit I saw her pictur. There was one o’ them papers we saw had a letter in it that said somethin’ ‘bout her boy, an’ it said he had a scar on his chin. Put them two together—her ‘n’ that there scar! Why, that there boy o’ hers aint no more a lord than I am! It’s BEN’S boy,—the little chap she hit when she let fly that plate at me.”
Professor Dick Tipton had always been a sharp boy, and earning his living in the streets of a big city had made him still sharper. He had learned to keep his eyes open and his wits about him, and it must be confessed he enjoyed immensely the excitement and impatience of that moment. If little Lord Fauntleroy could only have looked into the store that morning, he would certainly have been interested, even if all the discussion and plans had been intended to decide the fate of some other boy than himself.
Mr. Hobbs was almost overwhelmed by his sense of responsibility, and Dick was all alive and full of energy. He began to write a letter to Ben, and he cut out the picture and inclosed it to him, and Mr. Hobbs wrote a letter to Cedric and one to the Earl. They were in the midst of this letter-writing when a new idea came to Dick.
“Say,” he said, “the feller that give me the paper, he’s a lawyer. Let’s ax him what we’d better do. Lawyers knows it all.”
Mr. Hobbs was immensely impressed by this suggestion and Dick’s business capacity.
“That’s so!” he replied. “This here calls for lawyers.”
And leaving the store in the care of a substitute, he struggled into his coat and marched downtown with Dick, and the two presented themselves with their romantic story in Mr. Harrison’s office, much to that young man’s astonishment.
If he had not been a very young lawyer, with a very enterprising mind and a great deal of spare time on his hands, he might not have been so readily interested in what they had to say, for it all certainly sounded very wild and queer; but he chanced to want something to do very much, and he chanced to know Dick, and Dick chanced to say his say in a very sharp, telling sort of way.
“And,” said Mr. Hobbs, “say what your time’s worth a’ hour and look into this thing thorough, and I’LL pay the damage,—Silas Hobbs, corner of Blank street, Vegetables and Fancy Groceries.”
“Well,” said Mr. Harrison, “it will be a big thing if it turns out all right, and it will be almost as big a thing for me as for Lord Fauntleroy; and, at any rate, no harm can be done by investigating. It appears there has been some dubiousness about the child. The woman contradicted herself in some of her statements about his age, and aroused suspicion. The first persons to be written to are Dick’s brother and the Earl of Dorincourt’s family lawyer.”
And actually, before the sun went down, two letters had been written and sent in two different directions—one speeding out of New York harbor on a mail steamer on its way to England, and the other on a train carrying letters and passengers bound for California. And the first was addressed to T. Havisham, Esq., and the second to Benjamin Tipton.
And after the store was closed that evening, Mr. Hobbs and Dick sat in the back-room and talked together until midnight.
XIV
It is astonishing how short a time it takes for very wonderful things to happen. It had taken only a few minutes, apparently, to change all the fortunes of the little boy dangling his red legs from the high stool in Mr. Hobbs’s store, and to transform him from a small boy, living the simplest life in a quiet street, into an English nobleman, the heir to an earldom and magnificent wealth. It had taken only a few minutes, apparently, to change him from an English nobleman into a penniless little impostor, with no right to any of the splendors he had been enjoying. And, surprising as it may appear, it did not take nearly so long a time as one might have expected, to alter the face of everything again and to give back to him all that he had been in danger of losing.
It took the less time because, after all, the woman who had called herself Lady Fauntleroy was not nearly so clever as she was wicked; and when she had been closely pressed by Mr. Havisham’s questions about her marriage and her boy, she had made one or two blunders which had caused suspicion to be awakened; and then she had lost her presence of mind and her temper, and in her excitement and anger had betrayed herself still further. All the mistakes she made were about her child. There seemed no doubt that she had been married to Bevis, Lord Fauntleroy, and had quarreled with him and had been paid to keep away from him; but Mr. Havisham found out that her story of the boy’s being born in a certain part of London was false; and just when they all were in the midst of the commotion caused by this discovery, there came the letter from the young lawyer in New York, and Mr. Hobbs’s letters also.
What an evening it was when those letters arrived, and when Mr. Havisham and the Earl sat and talked their plans over in the library!
“After my first three meetings with her,” said Mr. Havisham, “I began to suspect her strongly. It appeared to me that the child was older than she said he was, and she made a slip in speaking of the date of his birth and then tried to patch the matter up. The story these letters bring fits in with several of my suspicions. Our best plan will be to cable at once for these two Tiptons,—say