Project Gutenberg's Little Lord Fauntleroy, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Title: Little Lord Fauntleroy

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Release Date: January 16, 2006 [EBook #479]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY

By Frances Hodgson Burnett

I

Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it. It had never been even
mentioned to him. He knew that his papa had been an Englishman, because
his mamma had told him so; but then his papa had died when he was so
little a boy that he could not remember very much about him, except that
he was big, and had blue eyes and a long mustache, and that it was a
splendid thing to be carried around the room on his shoulder. Since his
papa's death, Cedric had found out that it was best not to talk to his
mamma about him. When his father was ill, Cedric had been sent away, and
when he had returned, everything was over; and his mother, who had
been very ill, too, was only just beginning to sit in her chair by the
window. She was pale and thin, and all the dimples had gone from her
pretty face, and her eyes looked large and mournful, and she was dressed
in black.

"Dearest," said Cedric (his papa had called her that always, and so the
little boy had learned to say it),--"dearest, is my papa better?"

He felt her arms tremble, and so he turned his curly head and looked in
her face. There was something in it that made him feel that he was going
to cry.

"Dearest," he said, "is he well?"

Then suddenly his loving little heart told him that he'd better put both
his arms around her neck and kiss her again and again, and keep his
soft cheek close to hers; and he did so, and she laid her face on his
shoulder and cried bitterly, holding him as if she could never let him
go again.

"Yes, he is well," she sobbed; "he is quite, quite well, but we--we have
no one left but each other. No one at all."

Then, little as he was, he understood that his big, handsome young papa
would not come back any more; that he was dead, as he had heard of other
people being, althou