Маленький Лорд Фаунтлерой. Уровень 1 / Little Lord Fauntleroy - стр. 10

It was eleven days after he had said goodbye 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. 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 happy 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.”

Cedric pulled off his overcoat quite as if he were used to doing things for himself, and began to look around him. He looked around the broad hall, at the pictures and stags’ antlers[47] and interesting things that ornamented it. Mary led them upstairs to a bright bedroom where a fire was burning, and a large snow-white Persian cat was sleeping luxuriously on the white fur hearth-rug[48].

“It was the house-keeper up at the Castle, ma’am, sent her to you,” explained Mary. “She is a kind-hearted lady and has had everything done to prepare’ for you. And she said to say the big cat sleeping on the rug might make the room more homelike to you. ”

When they were ready, they went downstairs into another big bright room. The stately white cat had responded to Lord Fauntleroy’s stroking and followed him downstairs, and when he threw himself down upon the rug, she curled herself up grandly beside him as if she intended to make friends. Cedric was so pleased that he put his head down by hers, and lay stroking her, not noticing what his mother and Mr. Havisham were saying.

They were, indeed, speaking in a rather low tone. Mrs. Errol looked a little pale and agitated.

“Does he need to go tonight?” she said. “May he stay with me tonight?”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Havisham in the same low tone; “it will not be necessary for him to go tonight. I myself will go to the Castle as soon as we have dined, and inform the Earl of our arrival.”

Then she looked at the lawyer. “Will you tell him, if you please,” she said, “that I do not want the money?”

“The money!” Mr. Havisham exclaimed. “You can not mean the income he proposed to settle upon you!”

“Yes,” she answered, quite simply; “I think I should rather not have it. I am obliged to accept the house, and I thank him for it, because it makes it possible for me to be near my child; but I have a little money of my own, – enough to live simply upon, – and I should rather not take the other. As he dislikes me so much, I should feel a little as if I were selling Cedric to him. I am giving him up only because I love him enough to forget myself for his good, and because his father would wish it to be so.”

Mr. Havisham rubbed his chin.

“This is very strange,” he said. “He will be very angry. He won’t understand it.”

“I think he will understand it after he thinks it over,” she said. “I do not really need the money, and why should I accept luxuries from the man who hates me so much that he takes my little boy from me-his son’s child?”