t, and
sit and stare at the high stool for a long time. There were some marks
on the long legs which made him feel quite dejected and melancholy. They
were marks made by the heels of the next Earl of Dorincourt, when he
kicked and talked at the same time. It seems that even youthful earls
kick the legs of things they sit on;--noble blood and lofty lineage do
not prevent it. After looking at those marks, Mr. Hobbs 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." And after staring at it awhile, he would shut it up with a
loud snap, and sigh and get up and go and stand in the door-way--between
the box of potatoes and the barrel of apples--and look up the street.
At night, when the store was closed, he would light his pipe and walk
slowly along the pavement 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 any new idea came to him.
Being slow and ponderous, it always took him a long time to reach a
new idea. As a rule, he did not like new ideas, but preferred old ones.
After two or three weeks, however, during which, instead of getting
better, matters really grew worse, a novel plan slowly and deliberately
dawned upon 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 stopped on the
pavement and 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:

"Want a shine, sir?"

The stout man came forward deliberately and put his foot on the rest.

"Yes," he said.

Then when Dick fell to work, the stout man looked from Dick to the sign
and from the sign to Dick.

"Where did you get that?" he asked.

"From