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.”
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. Whereupon Polly, giving her hand a new little turn in his, expressive of settling down for enjoyment, commenced a long romance, of which every relishing clause began with the words: “So this” or “And so this.” As, “So this boy;” or, “So this fairy;” or, “And so this pie was four yards round, and two yards and a quarter deep.” The interest of the romance was derived from the intervention of this fairy to punish this boy for having a greedy appetite. To achieve which purpose, this fairy made this pie, and this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled and swelled and swelled. There were many tributary circumstances, but the forcible interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie, and the bursting of this boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers, with serious attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on the pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of the epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by and found deficient.
Thus they arrived at the hotel. And there he had to say at the bar, and said awkwardly enough: “I have found a little girl!”
The whole establishment turned out to look at the little girl. Nobody knew her; nobody could make out her name, as she set it forth – except one chambermaid, who said it was Constantinople – which it wasn’t.
“I will dine with my young friend in a private room,” said Barbox Brothers to the hotel authorities, “and perhaps you will be so good as let the police know that the pretty baby is here. I suppose she is sure to be inquired for, soon, if she has not been already. Come along, Polly.”
Perfectly at ease and peace, Polly came along, but, finding the stairs rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox Brothers. The dinner was a most transcendent success, and the Barbox sheepishness, under Polly’s directions how to mince her meat for her, and how to diffuse gravy over the plate with a liberal and equal hand, was another fine sight.
“And now,” said Polly, “while we are at dinner, you be good, and tell me that story I taught you.”
With the tremors of a civil service examination on him, and very uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie appeared in history, but also as to the measurements of that indispensable fact, Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but under encouragement did very fairly. There was a want of breadth observable in his rendering of the cheeks, as well as the appetite, of the boy; and there was a certain tameness in his fairy, referable to an under-current of desire to account for her. Still, as the first lumbering performance of a good-humoured monster, it passed muster.
“I told you to be good,” said Polly, “and you are good, ain’t you?”
“I hope so,” replied Barbox Brothers.
Such was his deference that Polly, elevated on a platform of sofa-cushions in a chair at his right hand, encouraged him with a pat or two on the face from the greasy bowl of her spoon, and even with a gracious kiss. In getting on her feet upon her chair, however, to give him this last reward, she toppled forward among the dishes, and caused him to exclaim as he effected her rescue: “Gracious Angels! Whew! I thought we were in the fire, Polly!”
“What a coward you are, ain’t you?” said Polly, when replaced.
“Yes, I am rather nervous,” he replied. “Whew! Don’t, Polly! Don’t flourish your spoon, or you’ll go over sideways. Don’t tilt up your legs when you laugh, Polly, or you’ll go over backwards. Whew! Polly, Polly, Polly,” said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to despair, “we are environed with dangers!”
Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls
