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."
"Oh no," said Barbox Brothers. "No, no, no. No blowing. Blowing′s not fair."
He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an idiotic monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hopeful opinion of himself by saying compassionately: "What a funny man you are!"
Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute grew bigger and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave himself up for a bad job. No giant ever submitted more meekly to be led in triumph by all- conquering Jack than he to be bound in slavery to Polly.
"Do you know any stories?" she asked him.
He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "No."
"What a dunce you must be, mustn′t you?" said Polly.
He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "Yes."
"Would you like me to teach you a story? But you must remember it, you know, and be able to tell it right to somebody else afterwards."
He professed that it would afford him the highest mental gratification to be taught a story, and that he would humbly endeavour to retain it in his mind.
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