“And that's all the blessed thing you can get out of him,” says cook; and the lost boy looks as if he felt cook to be perfectly right. In spite of the well-meant endeavors of the household to wash him and brush him, he is still a dreadfully travel-stained little boy, and he is powdered in every secret crease and wrinkle by that dust of old Charlesbridge, of which we always speak with an air of affected disgust, and a feeling of ill-concealed pride in an abomination so strikingly and peculiarly our own. He looks very much as if he had been following fire-engines about the streets of our learned and pulverous suburb ever since he could walk, and he certainly seems to feel himself in trouble to a certain degree; but there is easily imaginable in his bearing a conviction that after all the chief care is with others, and that, though unhappy, he is not responsible. The principal victim of his sorrows is also penetrated by this opinion, and after gazing forlornly upon him for a while, asks mechanically, “What's your name?” “Freddy,” is the laconic answer. “Freddy--?” trying with an artful inflection to lead him on to his surname. “Freddy,” decidedly and conclusively. “O, bless me! What's the name of the street your papa lives on?” This problem is far too deep for Freddy, and he takes a bite of sweet-cake in sign that he does not think of solving it. Frank looks at him gloomily for a moment, and then determines that he can grapple with the difficulty more successfully after he has had tea. “Send up the supper, Bridget. I think, my dear,” he says, after they have sat down, “we'd better all question our lost child when we've finished.” So, when they have finished, they have him up in the sitting-room, and the inquisition begins. “Now, Freddy,” his host says, with a cheerful air of lifelong friendship and confidence, “you know that everybody has got two names. Of course your first name is Freddy, and it's a very pretty name. Well, I want you to think real hard, and then tell me what your other name is, so I can take you back to your mamma.” At this allusion the child looks round on the circle of eager and compassionate faces, and begins to shed tears and to wring all hearts. “What's your name?” asks Frank, cheerfully,--“your _other_ name, you know?” “Freddy,” sobbed the forlorn creature. “O good heaven! this'll never do,” groaned the chief inquisitor. “Now, Freddy, try not to cry. What is your papa's name,--Mr.--?” with the leading inflection as before. “Papa,” says Freddy. [Illustration: “They skirmish about him with every sort of query.”] “O, that'll never do! Not Mr. Papa?” “Yes,” persists Freddy. “But, Freddy,” interposes Mrs. Sallie, as her husband falls back baffled, “when ladies come to see your mamma, what do they call her? Mrs.--?” adopting Frank's alluring inflection.