"Yes, but what about his family?" protested Daphne, "and the 115 awful tragedy of being lost?"
"God knows!" said her father. "But the awful tragedy of being lost is considerably less sometimes, I fancy, than the awful tragedy of being found! Every human catastrophe makes a lot of new problems of course—but it cancels, I imagine, just as many old ones. By land or sea there never was any smash-up yet, I suppose, that didn't release some poor soul with the cry, 'Now, I'll never have to tell! Now, they'll never need to know! Now, we'll never have to pay!' People who wondered how they could meet the coming day just didn't have to, that's all! And lads like our old friend here, Kiddie, are pretty apt to represent somebody's canceled problem. And anyway" (for comedy instead of tragedy he restaged his whole face suddenly by the shift of a single eyebrow), "and anyway, Kiddie," he laughed, "it must simplify life pretty considerably to forget everything in it except how to cook the one thing you like best! In your own case, for instance, what will you choose? Guava jelly? Or fudge?"
"Guava jelly and fudge nothing!" flared Daphne. In another 116 instant she was on her feet and speeding toward Lost Man.
"Whatever you do—don't start him swearing!" shouted her father. "Truly, I couldn't advise it!"
But heedless of everything except the intolerable mystery, Daphne was already at the camp fire poised like a slim wand of blue larkspur over the old man's crouching hulk.
"Must at least have been a Northerner once!" called her father, "or he'd never stand the shock of that bathing suit!"
Shrugging the raillery aside Daphne clutched out with desperate intensity at the old man's multicolored shoulder.
"Lost Man!" she flamed, "it's perfectly absurd for you to remember a silly little thing like how to make coffee and forget a great big important one like who you are! It doesn't make sense, I tell you? You must remember who you are! You must! You must! Lost Man, what is your name?"
"'Lost Man,'" answered the old chap, as though it had been Smith.