So he conversed with Annunciata in the kitchen, and Luigi in the dining-room, as it had been his habit to converse with Carrie and Dan years before, for by this time his love-locks had been cropped and had changed to brown, but he still remained the same charming and engaging little person. “Boys are sometimes a great trouble,” commented Luigi, in referring to him and his brother, “but these—they are little _signorini_.” Fauntleroy had “occurred” nearly four years before the time when he exhausted all the resources of the Paris Exposition, but it was still Fauntleroy, though a taller one, in schoolboy suit and Eton collar, and shorn of his _boucles blondes_, who marched off at nine o’clock every morning for two weeks, and spent the day exploring the treasures of the exhibition. Sometimes he was quite alone, sometimes he had appointments with some “friends” he had made in the passage from New York to Havre—three interesting men whose connection with the electrical exhibit inspired him with admiration and delight. My impression is that they did not speak French, and that it enraptured him to place his vocabulary at their disposal. “They are so kind to me, dearest,” he said, just as he had said it at three years old, when he visited his “friend Mrs. Wilkins.” “It must be an entertaining spectacle,” I often thought, “to see him walk into the restaurant quite unattended, order his little _déjeuner à la fourchette_, dispose of it in dignified solitude at a small table, and present the _garçon_ with a _pourboire_ as if he were forty. I should like to be a spectator from afar. No doubt the waiters know him and make jocular remarks among themselves.” But it was when he was only seven that Fauntleroy really occurred. He had been so amusing and interesting that summer, and I had reflected upon him so much! Every few days I heard some delightful anecdote about him, or saw him do something incomparably quaint. What led me most into speculation was the effect he invariably produced upon people, touching little fascinations he exercised. “Do you know, I never saw a child like him!” said a clever man of the world who had spent an hour talking to him. And, curiously enough, it was exactly the idea expressed by an old colored aunty years before. “Dat chile,” she said, “he suttanly ain’t like no other chile. ’Tain’t jest dat he’s smart—though cose he’s smart, smart as they make ’em. It’s sump’n else. An’ he’s the frien’liest little human I ever seed—he suttanly is!” I had been ill that year and the year before it, and of that illness I have many memories which are beautiful and touching things. One is of many disturbed and weary nights, when the door of my room opened quietly and a little figure entered—such an adorable little figure, in a white nightgown, and with bright hair, tumbled by sleep, falling about a serious, small face.