ttle 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 enj