Kitabı oku: «Mollie and the Unwiseman», sayfa 6

X
The Unwiseman's Luncheon
In which the Unwiseman makes Some Sensible Remarks on Eating

Whistlebinkie, said Mollie, one morning in the early spring, "it's been an awful long time since we saw the Unwiseman."

"Thasso," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I wonder what's become of him."

"I can't even guess," said Mollie. "I asked papa the other morning if he had seen any of his poetry in print and he said he hadn't so far as he knew, although he had read several books of poetry lately that sounded as if he'd written them. I say we go out and try to find him."

"Thasoots me," said Whistlebinkie.

"What's that?" said Mollie. "You still talk through the top of your hat so much that I really can't make out what you say half the time."

"I forgot," said Whistlebinkie, meekly. "What I meant to say was that that suits me. I'd like very much to see him again and hear some of his poetry."

"I don't much think he's stayed in that business," observed Mollie. "He's had time enough to be in sixteen different kinds of businesses since we saw him, and I'm pretty certain that he's tried eight of them any how."

"I guess may be so," said Whistlebinkie. "He's a great tryer, that old Unwiseman."

Mollie donned her new spring hat and Whistlebinkie treated his face and hands to a dash of cold water, after which they started out.

"It's the same old question now," said Mollie, as she stood on the street corner, wondering which way to turn. "Where would we better go to find him?"

"Well, it seems to me," said Whistlebinkie, after a moment's thought, "it seems to me that we'd better look for him in just the same place he was in the last time we saw him."

"I don't see why," returned Mollie. "We never did that before."

"That's why," explained Whistlebinkie. "He's such an unaccountable old man that he's sure to turn up where you least expected him. Now, as I look at it, the place where we least expect to find him is where he was before. Therefore I say let's go there."

"You're pretty wise after all, Whistlebinkie," said Mollie, with an approving nod. "We'll go there."

And it turned out that Whistlebinkie was right.

The house of the Unwiseman was found standing in precisely the same place in which they had last seen it, but pasted upon the front door was a small placard which read, "Gawn to Lunch. Will be Back in Eight Weeks."

"Dear me!" cried Whistlebinkie, as Mollie read the placard to him. "He must have been fearfully hungry to go to a lunch it will take that long to eat."

Mollie laughed. "I guess maybe I know him well enough to know what that means," she said. "It means that he's inside the house and doesn't want to be bothered by anybody. Let's go round to the back door and see if that is open."

This was no sooner said than done, but the back door, like the first, was closed. Like the front door, too, it bore a placard, but this one read, "As I said before, I've gone to lunch. If you want to know when I'll be back, don't bother about ringing the bell to ask me, for I shall not answer. Go round to the front door and find out for yourself. Yours tooly, the Unwiseman. P. S. I've given up the potery business, so if you're a editor, I don't want to see you any how; but if your name's Mollie, knock on the kitchen window and I'll let you in."

"I thought so," said Mollie. "He's inside."

Then the little girl tiptoed softly up to the kitchen window and peeped in, and there the old gentleman sat nibbling on a chocolate eclaire and looking as happy as could be.

Mollie tapped gently on the window, and the Unwiseman, hurriedly concealing his half-eaten eclaire in the folds of his newspaper, looked anxiously toward the window to see who it might be that had disturbed him. When he saw who it was his face wreathed with smiles, and rushing to the window he threw it wide open.

"Come right in," he cried. "I'm awfully glad to see you."

"I can't climb in this way," said Mollie. "Can't you open the door?"

"Can't possibly," said the Unwiseman. "Both doors are locked. I've lost the keys. You can't open doors without keys, you know. That's why I lost them. I'm safe from burglars now."

"But why don't you get new keys?" said Mollie.

"What's the use? I know where I lost the others, and when my eight weeks' absence is up I can find them again. New keys would only cost money, and I'm not so rich that I can spend money just for the fun of it," said the Unwiseman.

"Then, I suppose, I can't come in at all," said Mollie.

"Oh, yes, you can," said the Unwiseman. "Have you an Alpine stock?"

"What's that?" said Mollie.

"Ho!" jeered the Unwiseman. "What's an Alpine stock! Ha, ha! Not to know that; I thought little girls knew everything."

"Well, they do generally," said Mollie, resolved to stand up for her kind. "But I'm not like all little girls. There are some things I don't know."

"I guess there are," said the Unwiseman, with a superior air. "You don't know what rancour means, or fixity, or garrulousness."

"No, I don't," Mollie admitted. "What do they mean?"

"I'm not in the school-teacher business, and so I shan't tell you," said the Unwiseman, with a wave of his hand. "Besides, I really don't know myself – though I'm not a little girl. But I'll tell you one thing. An Alpine stock is a thing to climb Alps with, and a thing you can climb an Alp with ought to help you climbing into a kitchen window, because kitchen windows aren't so high as Alps, and they don't have snow on 'em in spring like Alps do."

"Oh," said Mollie. "That's it – is it? Well, I haven't got one, and I don't know where to get one, so I can't get in that way."

"Then there's only two things we can do," observed the Unwiseman. "Either I must send for a carpenter and have him build a new door or else I'll have to lend you a step-ladder. I guess, on the whole, the step-ladder is cheaper. It's certainly not so noisy as a carpenter. However, I'll let you choose. Which shall it be?"

"The step-ladder, I guess," said Mollie. "Have you got one?"

"No," returned the Unwiseman; "but I have a high-chair which is just as good. I always keep a high-chair in case some one should bring a baby here to dinner. I'd never ask any one to do that, but unexpected things are always happening, and I like to be prepared. Here it is."

Saying which the Unwiseman produced a high-chair and lowered it to the ground. Upon this Mollie and Whistlebinkie climbed up to the window-ledge, and were shortly comfortably seated inside this strange old man's residence.

"I see you've given up the poetry business," said Mollie, after a pause.

"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "I couldn't make it pay. Not that I couldn't sell all I could write, but that I couldn't write all that I could sell. You see, people don't like to be disappointed, and I had to disappoint people all the time. I couldn't turn out all they wanted. Two magazine editors sent in orders for their winter poetry. Ten tons apiece they ordered, and I couldn't deliver more than two tons apiece to 'em. That made them mad, and they took their trade elsewhere – and so it went. I disappointed everybody, and finally I found myself writing poetry for my own amusement, and as it wasn't as amusing as some other things, I gave it up."

"But what ever induced you to put out that sign, saying that you wouldn't be back for eight weeks?" asked Mollie.

"I didn't say that," said the Unwiseman. "I said I would be back in eight weeks. I shall be. What I wanted was to be able to eat my lunch undisturbed. I've been eating it for five weeks now, and at the end of three weeks I shall be through."

"It musterbin a big lunch," said Whistlebinkie.

"I don't know any such word as musterbin," said the Unwiseman, severely; "but as for the big lunch, it was big. One whole eclaire."

"I could eat an eclaire in five seconds," said Mollie.

"No doubt of it," retorted the Unwiseman. "So could I; but I know too much for that. I believe in getting all the enjoyment out of a thing that I can; and what's the sense of gobbling all the pleasure out of an eclaire in five seconds when you can spread it over eight weeks? That's a queer thing about you wise people that I can't understand. When you have something pleasant on hand you go scurrying through it as though you were afraid somebody was going to take it away from you. You don't make things last as you should ought to."

"Excuse me," interrupted Whistlebinkie, who had been criticized so often about the way he spoke, that he was resolved to get even. "Is 'should ought to' a nice way to speak?"

"It's nice enough for me," retorted the Unwiseman. "And as this is my house I have a right to choose the language I speak here. If you want to speak some other language, you can go outside and speak it."

Poor Whistlebinkie squeaked out an apology and subsided.

"Take bananas, for instance," said the Unwiseman, not deigning to notice Whistlebinkie's apology. "I dare say if your mother gives you a banana, you go off into a corner and gobble it right up. Now I find that a nibble tastes just as good as a bite, and by nibbling you can get so many more tastes out of that banana, as nibbles are smaller than bites, and instead of a banana lasting a week, or two weeks or eight weeks, it's all gone in ten seconds. You might do the same thing at the circus and be as sensible as you are when you gobble your banana. If the clown cracked his jokes and the trapezuarius trapozed, and the elephants danced, and the bare-back riders rode their horses all at once, you'd have just as much circus as you get the way you do it now, only it wouldn't be so pleasant. Pleasure, after all, is like butter, and it ought to be spread. You wouldn't think of eating a whole pat of butter at one gulp, so why should you be greedy about your pleasure?"

"Thassounds very sensible," put in Whistlebinkie.

"It is sensible," said the Unwiseman, with a kindly smile; "and that is why, having but one eclaire, I make it last me eight weeks. There isn't any use of living like a prince for five minutes and then starving to death for seven weeks, six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-five minutes."

Here the Unwiseman opened the drawer of his table and took out the eclaire to show it to Mollie.

"It doesn't look very good," said Mollie.

"That's true," said the Unwiseman; "but that helps. It's awfully hard work the first day to keep from nibbling it up too fast, but the second day it's easier, and so it goes all along until you get to the fourth week, and then you don't mind only taking a nibble. If it stayed good all the while, I don't believe I could make it last as long as I want to. So you see everything works for good under my system of luncheoning. In the first place the pleasure of a thing lasts a long time; in the second, you learn to resist temptation; in the third place, you avoid greediness; and last of all, after a while you don't mind not being greedy."

With this the old gentleman put the eclaire away, locked the drawer, and began to tell Mollie and Whistlebinkie all about the new business he was going into.

XI
The Unwiseman's New Business
In which the Old Gentleman and Mollie and Whistlebinkie Start on their Travels

I have at last found something to do," he said, as he locked the eclaire up in the drawer, "which will provide me in my old age with all the eclaires I need, with possibly one or two left over for my friends."

"Thassnice," whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "It's very nice, particularly if you are one of my friends, and come in for your share of the left-over eclaires – as, of course, you and Mollie will do. It all grew out of my potery business, too. You see, I didn't find that people who wanted potery ever bought it from a street-corner stand, but from regular potery peddlers, who go around to the newspaper offices and magazines with it, done up in a small hand-bag. So I gave up the stand and made a small snatchel – "

"A small what?" demanded Mollie.

"A small snatchel," repeated the Unwiseman. "A snatchel is a bag with a handle to it."

"Oh – I know. You mean a satchel," said Mollie.

"Maybe I do," observed the Unwiseman. "But I thought the word was snatchel, because it was a thing you could snatch up hurriedly and run to catch a train with. Anyhow, I made one and put some four or five pounds of potery in it, and started out to sell it. The first place I went to they said they liked my potery very much, but they couldn't use it because it didn't advertise anything. They wanted sonnets about the best kind of soap that ever was; or what they called a hook-and-eye lyric; or perhaps a few quatrains about baking-powders, or tooth-wash, or some kind of silver-polish. People don't read poems about mysteries and little red school-houses, and patriotism any more, they said; but if a real poet should write about a new kind of a clothes-wringer or a patent pickle he'd make a fortune, because he'd get his work published on fences and in railroad cars, which everybody sees, instead of in magazines that nobody reads."

"I've seen lots of those kinds of poems," said Mollie.

"They're mighty good reading, too," said Whistlebinkie. "And is that what you are going to do?"

"Not I!" retorted the Unwiseman, scornfully. "No, indeed, I'm not. Shakespeare never did such a thing, and I don't believe Milton did either, and certainly I shall not try it. The next place I went to they said they liked my potery well enough to print it, but I'd have to pay for having it done, which was very hard, because I hadn't any money. The next place they took a sonnet and said they'd pay for it when they published it, and when I asked when that would be, they said in about thirty-seven years."

"Mercy!" cried Mollie.

"That's what I said," said the Unwiseman, ruefully. "So again I went on until I found an editor who was a lovely man. He read all my things through, and when he'd finished he said he judged from the quality of my potery I must be a splendid writer of prose."

Whistlebinkie laughed softly.

"Yes," said the Unwiseman, "that's what he said. 'Mr. Unwiseman,' said he, 'after reading your poetry, it seems to me your forte is prose.' And I told him perhaps he was right, though I didn't know what he meant. At any rate, he was very good to me, and asked me where I lived, and all that. When I told him that I lived everywhere; how I just moved my house around to suit myself, and lived one day here and another day in Illinois, and another in Kamschatka, he grew interested at once."

"I should think he might," put in Mollie. "I didn't know you could move as far as Kamschatka."

"Certainly I can," said the Unwiseman; "and in a way that is what I am going to do. I have been engaged to travel in various parts of the world just by moving my house around at will, and what I see and do under such circumstances I am to write up for that editor's paper."

"Why it's perfectly splendid!" cried Mollie, clapping her hands together with glee at the very idea. "I wish I could go with you."

"Me too!" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Woof – woof!" barked Gyp, which the Unwiseman took to mean that Gyp wished also to be included.

"All right," said the Unwiseman. "I've no objection."

"I don't know what they'd say at home," said Mollie, as she thought of possible objections to the trip.

"Why they won't say anything," said the Unwiseman. "I'll only travel afternoons. We'll be back every day by six o'clock, and I don't suppose we'll start much before three. This house is a rapid traveller once she gets started. Just wait a minute and I'll show you. Sit tight in your chairs now. One – two – three – let her go!"

The old gentleman touched a button in the wall. The house shook violently for a second, apparently whizzed rapidly through the air, if the whistling of the wind outside meant anything, and then suddenly, with a thump and a bump, came to a standstill.

"Here we are," said the Unwiseman, opening the door. "Come outside."

The little party emerged, and Mollie was amazed to find herself standing on the top of a wonderful hill gazing out over the waters of a beautiful body of water of the most heavenly blue. At her feet a little yellowish city nestled into the hillside, and across a strip of silvery water was a huge and frowning fortress.

"This, Miss Whistlebinkie, is the city of Havana," said the Unwiseman to the astonished little maid. "You have come all the way from home to Cuba in five seconds – a distance of 1200 miles. So you see we can do all our travelling in the afternoons, and without your being away from your home any more than you naturally are during your play-time hours."

Mollie made no answer for a moment. She was too astonished to speak. Whistlebinkie was the first to recover, and he was not long in expressing his sentiments.

"Imagoin'," he whistled.

Gyp barked a similar resolution, whereupon Mollie said she'd see.

"But let us hurry back home again," she added, somewhat anxiously. She did not quite like being so far away from home without her mother knowing it.

"Certainly," said the Unwiseman, touching the button again. The violent shaking and whizzing sounds were repeated, and again, with a thump and a bump, the house came to a standstill. The Unwiseman opened the front door, and there they were, safe and sound, in the back yard of Mollie's home.

That night the little girl told the story of the day's adventure to her father, and he said that, under the circumstances, he had not the slightest objection to her making the grand tour of the world.

"Only," he said, "you must remember, dear, to be home to supper. Even if you find yourself at the coronation of a king, remember that it is your duty to be punctual at your meals. London, Paris, Pekin, or Kalamazoo are always ready to be seen, night or day, no matter what the time, but breakfast, dinner, and supper do not go on forever, and are served only at stated hours."

And so Mollie and Gyp and Whistlebinkie joined in the adventures of the Unwiseman Abroad, and, in point of fact, they started off that very afternoon, though what they saw I do not know, for I have not encountered them since. I only know that their journey was safely accomplished, and that they all got home that night without harm, for Mollie's papa told me so. He also told me, in confidence, that I might hope soon to hear some remarkable tales on the subject of their adventures; and if I do, I shall not fail to let you in turn hear what happened to "Mollie and The Unwiseman Abroad."