“I don’t know where I live,” she returned. “I am lost.” “What is your name?” “Polly.” “What is your other name?” The reply was prompt, but unintelligible. Imitating the sound, as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, “Trivits?” “O no!” said the child, shaking her head. “Nothing like that.” “Say it again, little one.” An unpromising business. For this time it had quite a different sound. He made the venture: “Paddens?” “O no!” said the child. “Nothing like that.” “Once more. Let us try it again, dear.” A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four syllables. “It can’t be Tappitarver?” said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his hat in discomfiture. “No! It ain’t,” the child quietly assented. On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with extraordinary efforts at distinctness, it swelled into eight syllables at least. “Ah! I think,” said Barbox Brothers, with a desperate air of resignation, “that we had better give it up.” “But I am lost,” said the child, nestling her little hand more closely in his, “and you’ll take care of me, won’t you?” If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion on the one hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the other, here the man was. “Lost!” he repeated, looking down at the child. “I am sure _I_ am. What is to be done!” “Where do _you_ live?” asked the child, looking up at him, wistfully. “Over there,” he answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of his hotel. “Hadn’t we better go there?” said the child. “Really,” he replied, “I don’t know but what we had.” So they set off, hand in hand. He, through comparison of himself against his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as if he had just developed into a foolish giant. She, clearly elevated in her own tiny opinion by having got him so neatly out of his embarrassment. “We are going to have dinner when we get there, I suppose?” said Polly. “Well,” he rejoined, “I—yes, I suppose we are.” “Do you like your dinner?” asked the child. “Why, on the whole,” said Barbox Brothers, “yes, I think I do.” “I do mine,” said Polly. “Have you any brothers and sisters?” “No. Have you?” “Mine are dead.” “Oh!” said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of unwieldiness of mind and body weighing him down, he would have not known how to pursue the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but that the child was always ready for him. “What,” she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, “are you going to do to amuse me, after dinner?” “Upon my soul, Polly,” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at a loss, “I have not the slightest idea!” “Then I tell you what,” said Polly. “Have you got any cards at your house?” “Plenty,” said Barbox Brothers, in a boastful vein. “Very well. Then I’ll build houses, and you shall look at me. You mustn’t blow, you know.” “O no!” said Barbox Brothers. “No, no, no. No blowing. Blowing’s not fair.”