"
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."
"O!" said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of unwieldiness of
mind and body weighing him down, he would not have 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 the house?"
"Plenty," said Barbox Brothers, in a boastful vein.
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