A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four syllables. "It
can't be Tappitarver?" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his
hat in discomfiture.

"No! It ain't," the child quietly assented.

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."