, as
he's been scalped so often. Being scalped a great many times might make
a person forgetful."

It was eleven days after he had said good-bye to his friend Dick before
he reached Liverpool; and it was on the night of the twelfth day that
the carriage in which he and his mother and Mr. Havisham had driven from
the station stopped before the gates of Court Lodge. They could not
see much of the house in the darkness. Cedric only saw that there was a
drive-way under great arching trees, and after the carriage had rolled
down this drive-way a short distance, he saw an open door and a stream
of bright light coming through it.

Mary had come with them to attend her mistress, and she had reached the
house before them. When Cedric jumped out of the carriage he saw one or
two servants standing in the wide, bright hall, and Mary stood in the
door-way.

Lord Fauntleroy sprang at her with a gay little shout.

"Did you get here, Mary?" he said. "Here's Mary, Dearest," and he kissed
the maid on her rough red cheek.

"I am glad you are here, Mary," Mrs. Errol said to her in a low voice.
"It is such a comfort to me to see you. It takes the strangeness away."
And she held out her little hand, which Mary squeezed encouragingly. She
knew how this first "strangeness" must feel to this little mother who
had left her own land and was about to give up her child.

The English servants looked with curiosity at both the boy and his
mother. They had heard all sorts of rumors about them both; they knew
how angry the old Earl had been, and why Mrs. Errol was to live at the
lodge and her little boy at the castle; they knew all about the great
fortune he was to inherit, and about the savage old grandfather and his
gout and his tempers.

"He'll have no easy time of it, poor little chap," they had said among
themselves.

But they did not know what sort of a little lord had come among
them; they did not quite understand the character of the next Earl of
Dorincourt.

He pulled off his overcoat quite as if he were used to doing things for
himself, and began to look about him. He looked about the broad hall, at
the pictures and stags' antlers and curious things that ornamented it.
They seemed curious to him because he had never seen such things before
in a private house.

"Dearest," he said, "this is a very pretty house, isn't it? I am glad
you are going to live here. It's quite a large house."

It was quite a large house compared to the o