to my birthday,"--she
shook hands with them both, and stood and talked to them in her
prettiest way, asking them about America and their voyage and their life
since they had been in England; while Fauntleroy stood by, looking up at
her with adoring eyes, and his cheeks quite flushed with delight because
he saw that Mr. Hobbs and Dick liked her so much.

"Well," said Dick solemnly, afterward, "she's the daisiest gal I
ever saw! She's--well, she's just a daisy, that's what she is, 'n' no
mistake!"

Everybody looked after her as she passed, and every one looked after
little Lord Fauntleroy. And the sun shone and the flags fluttered and
the games were played and the dances danced, and as the gayeties went
on and the joyous afternoon passed, his little lordship was simply
radiantly happy.

The whole world seemed beautiful to him.

There was some one else who was happy, too,--an old man, who, though he
had been rich and noble all his life, had not often been very honestly
happy. Perhaps, indeed, I shall tell you that I think it was because he
was rather better than he had been that he was rather happier. He had
not, indeed, suddenly become as good as Fauntleroy thought him; but, at
least, he had begun to love something, and he had several times found
a sort of pleasure in doing the kind things which the innocent, kind
little heart of a child had suggested,--and that was a beginning. And
every day he had been more pleased with his son's wife. It was true, as
the people said, that he was beginning to like her too. He liked to
hear her sweet voice and to see her sweet face; and as he sat in his
arm-chair, he used to watch her and listen as she talked to her boy; and
he heard loving, gentle words which were new to him, and he began to see
why the little fellow who had lived in a New York side street and known
grocery-men and made friends with boot-blacks, was still so well-bred
and manly a little fellow that he made no one ashamed of him, even when
fortune changed him into the heir to an English earldom, living in an
English castle.

It was really a very simple thing, after all,--it was only that he had
lived near a kind and gentle heart, and had been taught to think kind
thoughts always and to care for others. It is a very little thing,
perhaps, but it is the best thing of all. He knew nothing of earls and
castles; he was quite ignorant of all grand and splendid things; but he
was always lovable because he was simple and l