Little Lord Fauntleroy

Word of the Lord Fauntleroy’s innocent, good nature and of his kind stay of Higgins’s eviction tears through the town and is the topic de jour among the congregants at Mr. Mordaunt’s Sunday service. The Earl, contrary to habit, attends with Fauntleroy, who is compared to his father and met with a warm reception by the townspeople. They also greet Mrs. Errol warmly and deferentially, in contrast to the Earl, who excludes her from the family pew. Yet, he looks at her frequently throughout the service, noticing how much she resembles Cedric and remembering a conversation between mother and son that Cedric relayed to him. She exhorted her son to be brave and to make the world a better place, which he thinks it already is because of his grandfather. She agreed, qualifying that “we must always look for good in people and try to be like it” (164).

After the service, Higgins thanks Lord Fauntleroy, who corrects him, clarifying that he merely wrote the letter; his grandfather granted the stay on eviction. Higgins is dubious of this explanation, knowing the Earl’s selfish nature. The Earl, possibly sensing Higgins’s opinion of him, tells Higgins that everyone has misjudged him: “You people have been mistaken in me.