On Dolly the hopes of half the world now centred.
Not that Herminia had not at times hard struggles and sore temptations. One of the hardest and sorest came when Dolly was about six years old. And this was the manner of it.
One day the child who was to reform the world was returning from some errand on which her mother had sent her, when her attention was attracted by a very fine carriage, stopping at a door not far from their lodgings. Now Dolly had always a particular weakness for everything “grand”; and so grand a turn-out as this one was rare in their neighbourhood. She paused and stared hard at it. “Whose is it, Mrs Biggs?” she asked awe-struck of the friendly charwoman, who happened to pass at the moment—the charwoman who frequently came in to do a day’s cleaning at her mother’s lodging-house. Mrs Biggs knew it well; “It’s Sir Anthony Merrick’s,” she answered in that peculiarly hushed voice with which the English poor always utter the names of the titled classes. And so in fact it was; for the famous gout doctor had lately been knighted for his eminent services in saving a royal duke from the worst effects of his own self-indulgence. Dolly put one fat finger to her lip, and elevated her eyebrows, and looked grave at once. Sir Anthony Merrick! What a very grand gentleman he must be indeed, and how nice it must seem to be able to drive in so distinguished a vehicle with a liveried footman.
As she paused and looked, lost in enjoyment of that beatific vision, Sir Anthony himself emerged from the porch. Dolly took a good stare at him. He was handsome, austere, close-shaven, implacable. His profile was clear-cut, like Trajan’s on an aureus. Dolly thought that was just how so grand a gentleman ought to look; and, so thinking, she glanced up at him, and with a flash of her white teeth, smiled her childish approval. The austere old gentleman, unwontedly softened by that cherub face—for indeed she was as winsome as a baby angel of Raphael’s—stooped down and patted the bright curly head that turned up to him so trustfully. “What’s your name, little woman?” he asked, with a sudden wave of gentleness.
And Dolly, all agog at having arrested so grand an old gentleman’s attention, spoke up in her clear treble, “Dolores Barton.”