Chapter II: Part 2

"Poh!" snapped the Unwiseman. "Don't you wise people look where you step? I do, and they say I don't know enough to go in when it rains, which is not true. I know more than enough to go in when it rains. I stay out when it rains because I like to. I'm fond of the wet. It keeps me from drying up, and makes my clothes fit me. Why, if I hadn't stayed out in the rain every time I had a chance last summer my flannel suit never would have fitted me. It was eight sizes too big, and it took sixteen drenching storms to make it shrink small enough to be just right. Most men--wise men they call themselves--would have spent money having them misfitted again by a tailor, but I don't spend my money on things I can get done for nothing. That's the reason I don't pay anything out to beggars. I can get all the begging I want done on my place without having to pay a cent for it, and yet I know lots and lots of people who are all the time spending money on beggars."

"There is a great deal in what you say," said Mollie.

"There generally is," returned the Unwiseman. "I do a great deal of thinking, and I don't say anything without having thought it all out beforehand. That's why I'm so glad you were at home to-day. I mapped out all my conversation before I came. In fact, I wrote it all down, and then learned it by heart. It would have been very unpleasant if after doing all that, taking all that trouble, I should have found you out. It's very disappointing to learn a conversation, and then not converse it."

"I should think so," said Mollie. "What do you do on such occasions? Keep it until the next call?"

"No. Sometimes I tell it to the maid, and ask her to tell it to the person who is out. Sometimes I say it to the front door, and let the person it was intended for find it out for herself as best she can, but most generally I send it to 'em by mail."

Here the Unwiseman paused for a minute, cocking his head on one side as if to think.

"Excuse me," he said. "But I've forgotten what I was to say next. I'll have to consult my memorandum-book. Hold my umbrella a minute--over my head please. Thank you."

Then as Mollie did as the queer creature wished, he fumbled in his pockets for a minute and shortly extracting his memorandum-book from a mass of other stuff, he consulted its pages.

"Oh, yes!" he said, with a smile of happiness. "Yes, I've got it now. At this point you were to ask me if I wouldn't like a glass of lemonade, and I was to say yes, and then you were to invite me up-stairs to see your play room. There's some talk scattered in during the lemonade, but, of course, I can't go on until you've done your part."

He gazed anxiously at Mollie for a moment, and the little maid, taking the hint, smilingly said:

"Ah! won't you have a little refreshment, Mr. Me? A glass of lemonade, for instance?"

"Why--ah--certainly, Miss Whistlebinkie. Since you press me, I--ah--I don't care if I do."

And the caller and his hostess passed, laughing heartily, out of the white and gold parlor into the pantry.

"How do you like your lemonade?" asked Mollie, as she and the Unwiseman entered the pantry. "Very sour or very sweet?"

"What did you invite me to have?" the Unwiseman replied. "Lemonade or sugarade?"

"Lemonade, of course," said Mollie. "I never heard of sugarade before."

"Well, lemonade should be very lemony and sugarade should be very sugary; so when I am invited to have lemonade I naturally expect something very lemony, don't I?"

"I suppose so," said Mollie, meekly.

"Very well, then. That answers your question. I want it very sour. So sour that I can't drink it without it puckering my mouth up until I can't do anything but whistle like our elastic friend with the tootle in his hat."

"You mean Whistlebinkie?" said Mollie.

"Yes--that India-rubber creature who follows you around all the time and squeaks whenever any one pokes him in the ribs. What's become of him? Has he blown himself to pieces, or has he gone off to have himself made over into a golosh?"

"Oh, no--Whistlebinkie is still here," said Mollie. "In fact, he let you into the house. Didn't you see him?"

"No, indeed I didn't," said the Unwiseman. "What do you take me for? I'm proud, I am. I wouldn't look at a person who'd open a front door. I come of good family. My father was a Dunderberg and my mother was a Van Scootle. We're one of the oldest families in creation. One of my ancestors was in the Ark, and I had several who were not. It would never do for one in my position to condescend to see a person who opened a front door for pay.

"That's why I don't have servants in my own house. I'd have to speak to them, and the idea of a Dunderberg-Van Scootle engaged in any kind of conversation with servants is not to be thought of. We never did anything for pay in all the history of our family, and we never recognize as equals people who do. That's why I have nothing to do with anybody but children. Most grown up people work."

"I don't see how you live," said Mollie. "How do you pay your bills?"

"Don't have any," said the Unwiseman. "Never had a bill in my life. I leave bills to canary birds and mosquitoes."

"But you have to buy things to eat, don't you?"

"Very seldom," said the Unwiseman. "I'm never hungry; but when I do get hungry I can most generally find something to eat somewhere--apples, for instance. I can live a week on one apple."

"Well, what do you do when you've eaten the apple?" queried Mollie.

"What an absurd question," laughed the Unwiseman. "Didn't you know that there was more than one apple in the world? Every year I find enough apples to last me as long as I think it is necessary to provide. Last year I laid in fifty-three apples so that if I got very hungry one week I could have two--or maybe I could give a dinner and invite my friends, and they could have the extra apple. Don't you see?"

"Well, you are queer, for a fact!" said Mollie, getting a large lemon out of the pantry closet and cutting it in half.

As the sharp steel blade of the knife cut through the crisp yellow lemon the eyes of the Unwiseman opened wide and bulged with astonishment.

"What on earth are you doing, Miss Whistlebinkie?" he said. "Why do you destroy that beautiful thing?"

It was Mollie's turn to be surprised.

"I don't know what you mean," she said. "Why shouldn't I cut the lemon? How can I make a lemonade without cutting it?"

"Humph!" said the Unwiseman, with a half sneer on his lips. "You'll go to the poor-house if you waste things like that. Why, I've had lemonade for a year out of one lemon, and it hasn't been cut open yet. I drop it in a glass of water and let it soak for ten minutes. That doesn't use up the lemon juice as your plan does, and it makes one of the bitterest sour drinks that you ever drank--however, this is your lemonade treat, and it isn't for me to criticize. My book of etiquette says that people out calling must act according to the rules of the house they are calling at. If you asked me to have some oyster soup and then made it out of sassafras or snow-balls, it would be my place to eat it and say I never tasted better oyster soup in my life. That's a funny thing about being polite. You have to do and say so many things that you don't really mean. But go ahead. Make your lemonade in your own way. I've got to like it whether I like it or not. It isn't my lemon you are wasting."

Mollie resumed the making of the lemonade while the Unwiseman looked about him, discovering something that was new and queer to him every moment. He seemed to be particularly interested in the water pipes.

"Strange idea that," he said, turning the cold water on and off all the time. "You have a little brook running through your house whenever you want it. Ever get any fish out of it?"

"No," said Mollie, with a laugh. "We couldn't get very big fish through a faucet that size."

"That's what I was thinking," said the Unwiseman, turning the water on again; "and furthermore, I think it's very strange that you don't fix it so that you can get fish. A trout isn't more than four inches around. You could get one through a six-inch pipe without any trouble unless he got mad and stuck his fins out. Why don't you have larger faucets and catch the fish? I would. If there aren't any fish in the brook you can stock it up without any trouble, and it would save you the money you pay to fish-markets as well as the nuisance of going fishing yourself and putting worms on hooks."

A long hilarious whistle from the pantry door caused the Unwiseman to look up sharply.

"What was that?" he said.

"Smee," came the whistling voice.

"It's Whistlebinkie," said Mollie.

"Is his real name Smee?" asked the Unwiseman. "I thought Whistlebinkie was his name."

"So it is," said Mollie. "But when he gets excited he always runs his words together and speaks them through the top of his hat. By 'smee' he meant 'it's me.' Come in, Whistlebinkie."

"I shall not notice him," said the Unwiseman, stiffly. "Remember what I said to you about my family. He opens front doors for pay."

"Donteither," whistled Whistlebinkie.

"You wrong him, Mr. Unwiseman," said Mollie. "He isn't paid for opening the front door. He just does it for fun."

"Oh! well, that's different," said the proud visitor. "If he does it just for fun I can afford to recognize him--though I must say I can't see what fun there is in opening front doors. How do you do, Whistlebinkie?"

"Pretwell," said Whistlebinkie. "How are you?"

"I hardly know what to say," replied the Unwiseman, scratching his head thoughtfully. "You see, Miss Mollie, when I got up my conversation for this call I didn't calculate on Whistlebinkie here. I haven't any remarks prepared for him. Of course, I could tell him that I am in excellent health, and that I think possibly it will rain before the year is over; but, after all, that's very ordinary kind of talk, and we'll have to keep changing the subject all the time to get back to my original conversation with you."

"Whistlebinkie needn't talk at all," said Mollie. "He can just whistle."

"Or maybe I could go outside and put in a few remarks for him here and there, and begin the call all over again," suggested the Unwiseman.

"Oh, no! Dodoothat," began Whistlebinkie.

"Now what does he mean by dodoothat?" asked the visitor, with a puzzled look on his face.

"He means don't do that--don't you, Whistlebinkie? Answer plainly through your mouth and let your hat rest," said Mollie.

"That--swat--I--meant," said Whistlebinkie, as plainly as he could. "He--needn't--botherto--talk--toomee--to me, I mean. I only--want--to--listen--towhim."

"What's towhim?" asked the Unwiseman.

"To you is what he means. He says he's satisfied to listen to you when you talk."

"Thassit," Whistlebinkie hurried to say, meaning, I suppose, "that's it."

"Ah!" said the Unwiseman, with a pleased smile. "That's it, eh? Well, permit me to say that I think you are a very wonderfully wise rubber doll, Mr. Whistlebinkie. I may go so far as to say that in this view of the case I think you are the wisest rubber doll I ever met. You like my conversation, do you?"

"Deedido," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I think it's fine!"

"I owe you an apology, Whistlebinkie," said the Unwiseman, gazing at the doll in an affectionate way. "I thought you opened front doors for pay, instead of which I find that you are one of the wisest, most interesting rubber celebrities of the day. I apologize for even thinking that you would accept pay for opening a front door, and I will esteem it a great favor if you will let me be your friend. Nay, more. I shall make it my first task to get up a conversation especially for you. Eh? Isn't that fine, Whistlebinkie? I, Me, the Unwiseman, promise to devote fifteen or twenty minutes of his time to getting up talk for you, talk with thinking in it, talk that amounts to something, talk that ninety-nine talkers out of a hundred conversationalists couldn't say if they tried; and all for you. Isn't that honor?"

"Welliguess!" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Very well, then. Listen," said the Unwiseman. "Where were we at, Miss Mollie?"

"I believe," said Mollie, squeezing a half a lemon, "I believe you were saying something about putting fish through the faucet."

"Oh, yes! As I remember it, the faucets were too small to get the fish through, and I was pondering why you didn't have them larger."

"That was it," said Mollie. "You thought if the faucets were larger it would save fish-hooks and worms."

"Exactly," said the Unwiseman. "And I wonder at it yet. I'd even go farther. If I could have a trout-stream running through my house that I could turn on and off as I pleased, I'd have also an estuary connected with the Arctic regions through which whales could come, and in that way I'd save lots of money. Just think what would happen if you could turn on a faucet and get a whale. You'd get oil enough to supply every lamp in your house. You wouldn't have to pay gas bills or oil bills, and besides all that you could have whale steaks for breakfast, and whenever your mother wanted any whale-bone, instead of sending to the store for it, she'd have plenty in the house. If you only caught one whale a month, you'd have all you could possibly need."

"It certainly is a good idea," said Mollie. "But I don't think----"

"Wait a minute, please," said the Unwiseman, hastily. "That don't think remark of yours isn't due until I've turned on this other faucet."

Suiting his action to his word, the Unwiseman turned on the hot-water faucet, and plunging his hand into the water, slightly scalded his fingers.

"Ouch!" he cried. "The brook must be afire! Now who ever heard of that? The idea of a brook being on fire! Really, Miss Whistlebinkie, you ought to tell your papa about this. If you don't, the pipes will melt and who knows what will become of your house? It will be flooded with burning water!"

"Oh, no!--I guess not. That water is heated down stairs in the kitchen, in the boiler."

"But--but isn't it dangerous?" the Unwiseman asked, anxiously.

"Not at all," said Mollie. "You've been mistaken all along, Mr. Me. There isn't any brook running through this house."

"I?" cried the Unwiseman, indignantly. "Me? I? The Unwiseman mistaken? Never! I never made a mistake but once, Miss Mary J. Whistlebinkie, and that was in calling upon you. I'm going home at once. You have outrageously offended me."

"I didn't mean to," pleaded Mollie. "I was only trying to tell you the truth. This water comes out of a tank."

"Excuse me," said the Unwiseman, indignantly. "You have said that I have made a mistake. You charge me with an act of which I have never been guilty, and I am going straight home. You said something that wasn't in the conversation, and we can never get back again to the point from which you have departed."

"Oh! do stay," said Whistlebinkie. "You haven't seen the nursery yet, and the hardwood stairs, and all the lovely things we have here."

"No, I haven't--and I sha'n't now!" retorted the Unwiseman. "I had some delicious remarks to make about the nursery, but now they are impossible. I shall not even drink your lemonade. I am going home!"

And without another word the Unwiseman departed in high dudgeon.

"Isn't it too bad," said Mollie, as she heard the front door slam after the departing guest.

"Yes," said Whistlebinkie. "I wanted him to stay until it was dark. I should like so much to know what he'd have to say about gas."

It]

was the Saturday before Christmas. Mollie and Whistlebinkie started out in the afternoon to watch the boys skating for a while, after which they went to the top of the great hill just outside the village to take a coast or two. Whistlebinkie had never had any experience on a sled, and he was very anxious to try it just once, and, as Mollie was a little sleepy when he began persuading her to take him some time when she went, for the sake of peace and rest she had immediately promised what he wished of her. So here they were, on this cold, crisp December day, laboriously lugging Mollie's sled up the hill.

"Tain-teesy!" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"What's that you say?" panted Mollie, for she was very much out of breath.

"Tain-teesy," repeated Whistlebinkie. "I can't wissel well when I'm out of breath."

"Well, I guess I know what you mean," said Mollie. "You mean that it isn't easy pulling this sled up hill."

"Thassit!" said Whistlebinkie. "If this is what you call coasting, I don't want any more of it."

"Oh, no!" said Mollie. "This isn't coasting. This is only getting ready to coast. The coast comes when you slide down hill. We'll come down in about ten seconds."

"Humph!" said Whistlebinkie. "All this pulling and hauling for ten seconds' worth of fun?"

"That's what I say!" said a voice at Mollie's elbow. "Sliding down hill is never any fun unless you live at the top of the hill and wish to go down to the level to stay forever."

"Why," cried Mollie, delightedly, as she recognized the voice; "why it's the Unwiseman!"

"Sotiz!" roared Whistlebinkie, intending, of course to say "so it is."

"Certainly it is," said the Unwiseman; "for how could it be otherwise, seeing as I am not a magic lantern and so cannot change myself into some one else? I've got to stay Me always."

"Magic lanterns can't change themselves into anything else," said Mollie. "You must mean magician."

"Maybe I must," said the Unwiseman. "I guess you are right. Some people call 'em by a long name like prestodigipotatoes, but your word is good enough for me, so we'll let it go at that. I'm not a magellan, so I can't transfigure myself. Therefore, I am still the Unwiseman at your service. But tell me, are you going sliding?"

"Yes," said Mollie. "Want to come with us?"

"I'd like to, but I'm afraid I can't. I'm very busy," replied the Unwiseman. "I'm going into business."

"You?" cried Mollie, in amazement. "Why, didn't you tell me once that you never worked? That no member of your family had ever worked, and that you despised trade?"

"Iyeardim," put in Whistlebinkie.

"What's that?" queried the Unwiseman, frowning at Whistlebinkie. "What does iyeardim mean?"

"It's Whistlebinkie for 'I heard him,'" explained Mollie. "He means to say that he heard you say you had never worked and never intended to."

"No doubt," said the Unwiseman. "No doubt. But misfortune has overtaken me. I have ceased to like apples."

"Ho!" laughed Mollie. "What has that to do with it?"

"I have ceased to like apples and have conceived an unquenchable thirst for chocolate eclaires," said the Unwiseman. "Hitherto, as I once told you, I have lived on apples, which cost me nothing, because I could pick them up in the orchard, but chocolate eclaires cost money. I have been informed, and I believe, they cost five cents a piece; that they do not grow on trees, but are made by men calling themselves fakirs----"

"Bakers, you mean, I guess," interrupted Mollie.

"It may be," said the Unwiseman, "though neither fakir nor baker seems to me to be so good a name for a man who makes cakes as the word caker."

"But there isn't any such word," said Mollie.

"Then that accounts for it," said the Unwiseman. "If there were such a word those men would be called by it. But to come back to the chocolate eclaires, whether they are made by bakers, fakirs, or plumbers, they cost money; if I don't have them I shall starve to death, for I can never more eat apples; therefore, to live I must make some money, and to make money I must go into business."

"Well, I haven't any doubt it will be good for you," said Mollie. "It's always well to have something to do. What business are you going into?"

"Ah!" said the Unwiseman, with a shake of his head. "That's my secret. I've got a patent business I'm going into. It's my own invention. I was going to be a lawyer at first, but I heard that lawyers gave advice. I don't intend to give anything. There isn't any money in giving things, so, of course, I decided not to be a lawyer--besides, I know of a man who was a lawyer and he spent all of his life up to his ears in trouble, and he didn't even own the trouble. It all belonged to his victims."

"Why don't you become a minister?" suggested Mollie.

"That's too hard work," said the Unwiseman. "You've got to go to church three times every Sunday, and, besides, my house wouldn't look well with a steeple on it. Then, too, I'd have to take a partner to ring the bell and play the organ, and, of course, he'd want half the collections. No: I couldn't be a minister. I'm too droll to be one, even if my house would look well with a steeple on it. I did think some of being a doctor, though."

"Why don't you?" said Mollie. "Doctors are awfully nice people. Our doctor is just lovely. He gives me the nicest medicines you ever saw."

"That may be true; but I don't want to be a doctor," returned the Unwiseman. "You have to study an awful lot to be a doctor. I knew a man once who studied six weeks before he could be a doctor, and then what do you suppose happened? It was awfully discouraging."

"What was it?" queried Mollie.

"Why, he practised on a cat he owned, to see what kind of a doctor he had become, and the cat died all nine times at once; so the poor fellow, after wasting all those weeks on study, had to become a plumber, after all. Plumbing is the easiest profession of all, you know. You don't have to know anything to be a plumber, only you've got to have strong eyes."

"I didn't know that," said Mollie.

"Oh my, yes!" returned the Unwiseman. "You can't be a plumber unless you have strong eyes. It is very bad for a weak-eyed person to have to sit on the floor and look at a pipe all day. That is one reason why I'm not going to be a plumber. The other reason is that they never get any rest. They work all day eying pipes, and then have to sit up all night making out bills, and then they burn their fingers on stoves, and they sometimes get their feet wet after springing a leak on a pipe, and, altogether, it isn't pleasant. People play jokes on plumbers, too; mean jokes. Why, I knew a plumber who was called out in the middle of the night once by a city man who was trying to be a farmer during the summer months, and what do you suppose the trouble was?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mollie. "What?"

"The city man said he'd come home late and found the well full of water, and what was worse, the colander was riddled with holes. Twelve o'clock at night, mind you, and one of these bitter cold summer nights you find down in New Jersey."

"That was awfully mean," said Mollie. "That is, it was if the city man didn't know any better."

"He did know better. He did it just for a joke," said the Unwiseman.

"And didn't the plumber put in a great big bill for that?" asked Mollie.

"Yes--but the city man couldn't pay it," said the Unwiseman. "That was the meanest part of the joke. He went and lost all his money afterward. I believe he did it just to spite the plumber."

"Well," said Mollie, "here we are at the top of the hill at last. Won't you change your mind and go down with us, just once?"

"Nope," returned the Unwiseman. "I can't change my mind. Can't get it out of my head, to change. Besides, I must hurry. I've got to get a hundred pairs of stockings before Christmas Eve."

"Oh!" said Mollie. "I see. You are going into the stocking business."

"No, I'm not," said the queer old fellow, with a knowing smile. "There isn't much money in selling stockings. I've got a better idea than that. You come around to my house Christmas morning and I'll show you a thing or two--that is, I will if I can get the hundred pairs of stockings--you couldn't lend me a few pairs, could you?"

"I guess maybe so," said Mollie.

"All right--thank you very much," said the Unwiseman. "I'll be off now and get them. Good-by."

And before Mollie could say another word he was gone.

"Isn't he the worst you ever saw?" said Mollie.

"Puffickly-digulous," said Whistlebinkie.

"I wonder what his business is to be," observed Mollie, as she seated herself on the sled and made ready for the descent.

"I haven't the slightest ideeeee-eeeeeeee-eeeee-eeee-ah!" whistled Whistlebinkie; a strange and long-drawn-out word that; but whistling dolls are very like boys and girls when they are sliding down hill. Mollie had set the sled in motion just as Whistlebinkie started to speak, and her little rubber companion could not get away from the letter _e_ in idea until he and his mistress ran plump into the snow-drift at the foot of the hill.

"My!" said Whistlebinkie, blowing the snow out of his whistle. "Wasn't that fine! I could do that all day."

"You could if the hill was long enough," said Mollie, sagely. "But come, we must go home now." And home they went.

In the forty-eight or more hours that passed before Christmas morning came, Mollie often wondered at the business venture of the Unwiseman. What it could be she could not guess. The hundred pairs of stockings mystified her exceedingly, and so, when Christmas morning finally dawned, the first thing she and Whistlebinkie did was to post off at full speed to the house of the Unwiseman.

"I wonder where his home is now?" said Whistlebinkie, as they walked along.

"I haven't the slightest idea," said Mollie; "but it's had a way of turning up where we least expected it in the past, so maybe we'll find it in the same way now."

Mollie was right, for hardly were the words out of her mouth when directly in front of her she saw what was unmistakably the house of the Unwiseman, only fastened to the chimney was a huge sign, which had not been there the last time she and Whistlebinkie had visited the Unwiseman.

"What is that he's got on his chimmilly?" said Whistlebinkie, who did not know how to spell, and who always pronounced words as he thought they were spelled.

"It's a sign--sure as you live," said Mollie.

"What does it say?" Whistlebinkie asked.

"The Unwiseman's Orphan Asylum," said Mollie, reading the sign. "Notice to Santa Claus: Dear Sir:--Too Hundred Orphans is Incarcerated Here. Please leave Toys Accordingly."

"Ho!" said Whistlebinkie. "How queer."

"You don't suppose he has really gone into the Orphan Asylum business?" said Mollie.

"I dono," said Whistlebinkie. "Let's wait till we see him before we decide."

So they ran on until they got to the Unwiseman's front door, upon which they knocked as hard as they knew how.

"Who's there?" came a reply in a mournful voice, from within.

"It's us," said Mollie.

"Who is Uss?" said the voice. "I know several Usses. Are you George W. Uss, the trolley-car conductor, or William Peters Uss, the poet? If you are the poet, I don't want to see you. I don't care for any poetry to-day. If you are the conductor, I've paid my fare."

"It's Mollie and Whistlebinkie," said Mollie.

"Oh--well, that's different. Come in and see your poor ruined old friend, who's got to go back to apples, whether he likes them or not," said the voice.

Mollie opened the door and walked in, Whistlebinkie following close behind her--and what a sight it was that met their gaze! There in the middle of the floor sat the Unwiseman, the perfect picture of despair. Scattered about the room were hundreds of broken toys, and swinging from the mantel-piece were two hundred stockings.

"Hello!" said the Unwiseman. "Merry Christmas. I'm ruined; but what of that? You aren't."

"But how are you ruined?" asked Mollie.

"My business has failed--it didn't work," groaned the Unwiseman. "It was the toy business I was going into, and as I had no money to buy the toys with I borrowed a hundred pairs of stockings and hung 'em up. Then I put out that notice for Santa Claus, telling him that this was an Orphan Asylum."

"Yes," said Mollie, "I know. But it wasn't the truth, was it?"

"Of course it was," said the Unwiseman. "I'm an orphan. Very few men of my age are not, and this is my asylum."

"Yes; but you said there were two hundred in here," said Mollie. "I saw your sign."

"Well there are," said the Unwiseman. "The piano hasn't any father or mother, neither have the chairs, or the hundred and ninety-eight other orphans in this house. It was all true."

"Well, anyhow," said Whistlebinkie, "you've got heaps of things. Every stocking seems to have been filled."

"True," said the Unwiseman. "But almost entirely with old, cast-off toys. I think it's pretty mean that boys and girls who are not orphans should get all the new toys and that those who are orphans get the broken ones."

Which strikes me as a very wise remark for an unwise man to make.

"Anyhow," continued the Unwiseman, "I'm ruined. I can't sell these toys, and so I've got to go back to apples."

And here he fell to weeping so violently that Mollie and Whistlebinkie stole softly out and went home; but on the way Mollie whispered to Whistlebinkie:

"I'm rather sorry for him; but, after all, it was his own fault. He really did try to deceive Santa Claus."

"Yes," said Whistlebinkie. "That's so. But he was right about the meanness of giving only old toys to orphans."

"Yes, he was," said Mollie.

"Yesindeedy!" whistled Whistlebinkie through his hat, gleefully, for he was very happy, as indeed I should be, if I were an old toy, to hear my little master or mistress say it was mean to give me away.

"By the way," said Mollie. "He seems to have got over his anger with us. I was afraid he wouldn't ever speak to us again after his call."

"So was I," said Whistlebinkie. "And I asked him if he wasn't mad at us any more, and he said, yes he was, but he'd forgiven us for our Christmas present."

During]

the days immediately following Christmas Mollie was so absorbed in the beautiful things the season of peace on earth and good will to men had brought to her that she not only forgot the Unwiseman and his woe over the failure of his business plans, but even her poor little friend Whistlebinkie was allowed to lie undisturbed and unthought of. Several times when she had come near his side Whistlebinkie had tried to whistle something in her ear, but unsuccessfully. Either the something he wanted to whistle wouldn't come, or else if it did Mollie failed to hear it, and Whistlebinkie was very unhappy in consequence.

"That's always the way," he sobbed to Flaxilocks who shared his exile with him and who sat on the toy shelf gazing jealously out of her great, deep blue eyes at the magnificent new wax doll that Mollie had received from her grandmother; "don't make any difference how fine a toy may be, he may be made of the best of rubber, and have a whistle that isn't equalled by any locomotive whistle in the world for sweetness, the time comes when his master or mistress grows tired of him and lavishes all her affection on another toy because the other toy happens to be new. What on earth she can see in that real dog to admire I cannot discern. He can't bark half so well as I can whistle, and I am in mortal terror of him all the time, he eyes me so hungrily--but now he is her favorite. Everywhere Mollie goes Gyp goes, and I'm real mad."

"Oh, never mind," said Flaxilocks; "she'll get tired of him in a week or two and then she'll take us up again, just as if we were new. I've been around other Christmases and I know how things work. It'll be all right in a little while--that is, it will be for you. I don't know how it is going to turn out with me. That new doll, while I can see many defects in her, which you can't, I can't deny is a beauty, and her earrings are much handsomer than mine. It may be that I must become second to her; but you, you needn't play second fiddle to any one, for there isn't another rubber doll with a whistle in his hat in the house to rival you."

"Well, I wish I could be sure of that," said Whistlebinkie, mournfully, "I can see very well how Mollie can love you as well as she loves me--but that real dog, bah! He can't even whistle, and he's awfully destructive. Only last night he chewed up the calico cat, and actually, Mollie laughed. Do you suppose she would laugh if he chewed me up?"

"He couldn't chew you up," said Flaxilocks. "You are rubber." Whistlebinkie was about to reply to this when his fears were set at rest and Flaxilocks was comforted, for Mollie with her new dog and wax doll came up to where they were sitting and introduced her new pets to the old ones.

"I want you four to know each other," she said. "We'll have lots of fun together this year," and then before they knew it Flaxilocks and the new doll were fast friends, and as for Whistlebinkie and Gyp, they became almost inseparable. Gyp barked and Whistlebinkie whistled, while the dolls sat holding each other's hands, looking if anything quite as happy as Mollie herself.

"What do you all say to making a call on the Unwiseman?" Mollie said, after a few minutes. "We ought to go wish him a Happy New Year."

"Simply elegant," whistled Whistlebinkie, and Gyp and the dolls said he was right, and so they all started off together.

"Where does he live?" asked the new doll.

"All around," said Flaxilocks. "He has a house that moves about. One day it is in one place and another in another."

"But how do you find it?" queried the new doll.

"You don't have to," whistled Whistlebinkie. "You just walk on until you run against it,"--and just as he spoke, as if to prove his words, bang! he ran right into the gate. "Here it is now," he added.

"He evidently doesn't want to see anybody," said Mollie, noticing a basket hanging from the front door-knob. "He's put out a basket for cards. Dear me! I wish he'd see us."

"Maybe he will," said Whistlebinkie. "I'll ring the bell. Hello!" he added sharply, as he looked into the basket; "that's queer. It's chock-up full of cards now--somebody must have called."

"It has a placard over it," said Flaxilocks.

"So it has," said Mollie, a broad smile brightening her face; "and it says, 'Take one' on it. What _does_ he mean?"

"That looks like your card on top," said Flaxilocks.

"Why it _is_ my card," cried Mollie, "and here is Whistlebinkie's card too. We haven't been here."

"Of course you haven't," said a voice from behind the door. "But you are here now. I knew you were coming and I was afraid you'd forget to bring your cards with you, so I took some of your old ones that you had left here before and put 'em out there where you could get them. Ring the bell, and I'll let you in."

Whistlebinkie rang the bell as instructed, and the door was immediately opened, and there stood the Unwiseman waiting to welcome them.

"Why, dear me! What a delicious surprise," he said. "Walk right in. I had no idea you were coming."

"We came to wish you a Happy New Year," said Mollie.

"That's very kind of you," said the Unwiseman, "very kind, indeed. I was thinking of you this morning when I was making my good resolutions for the New Year. I was wondering whether I ought to give you up with other good things, and I finally decided not to. One must have some comfort."

"Then you have made some good resolutions, have you?" said Mollie.

"Millions of 'em," said the Unwiseman; "and I'm going to make millions more. One of 'em is that I won't catch cold during the coming year. That's one of the best resolutions a man of my age can make. Colds are very bad things, and it costs so much to be rid of them. Why, I had one last winter and I had to burn three cords of wood to get rid of it."

"Do you cure a cold with wood?" asked Flaxilocks.

"Why not?" returned the Unwiseman. "A roaring hot fire is the best cure for cold I know. What do you do when you have a cold, sit on the ice-box?"

"No, I take medicine," said Mollie. "Pills and things."

"I don't like pills," said the Unwiseman. "They don't burn well. I bought some quinine pills to cure my cold three winters ago, and they just sizzled a minute when I lit them and went out." This pleased Gyp so much that he sprang upon the piano and wagged his tail on C sharp until Mollie made him stop.

"Another resolution I made," continued the Unwiseman, "was to open that piano. That's why it's open now. I've always kept it locked before, but now it is going to be open all the time. That'll give the music a chance to get out; and it's a good thing for pianos to get a little fresh air once in a while. It's the stale airs in that piano--airs like Way Down Upon the Suwanee River, and Annie McGinty, and tunes like that that have made me dislike it."

"Queerest man I ever saw!" whispered the new doll to Flaxilocks.

"But I didn't stop there," said the Unwiseman. "I made up my mind that I wouldn't grow any older this year. I'm going to stay seven hundred, just as I am now, always. Seven hundred is old enough for anybody, and I'm not going to be greedy about my years when I have enough. Let somebody else have the years, say I."

"Very wise and very generous," said Mollie; "but I don't see just how you are going to manage it."

"Me neither," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I do'see how you're going to do that."

"Simple enough," said the Unwiseman. "I've stopped the clock."

Gyp turned his head to one side as the Unwiseman spoke and looked at him earnestly for a few seconds, and then, as if overcome with mirth at the idea, he rushed out of the door and chased his tail around the house three times.

"What an extraordinary animal that is," said the Unwiseman. "He must be very young."

"He is," said Mollie. "He is nothing but a puppy."

"Well, it seems to me he wastes a good deal of strength," said the Unwiseman. "Why, if I should run around the house that way three times I'd be so tired I'd have to hire a man to help me rest."

"Are you really seven hundred years old?" queried the new doll, who, I think, would have followed Gyp's example and run around the house herself if she had thought it was dignified and was not afraid of spoiling her new three-button shoes.

"I don't know for sure," said the Unwiseman, "but I fancy I must be. I know I'm over sixty because I was born seventy-three years ago. Seven hundred is over sixty, and so for the sake of round figures I have selected that age. It's rather a wonderful age, don't you think so?"

"It certainly is," said the new doll.

"But then you are a wonderful man," said Mollie.

"True," said the Unwiseman, reflectively. "I am wonderful. Sometimes I spend the whole night full of wonder that I should be so wonderful. I know so much. Why, I can read French. I can't understand it, but I can read it quite as well as I can English. I can't read English very well, of course; but then I only went to school one day and that happened to be a holiday; so I didn't learn how to do anything but take a day off. But we are getting away from my resolutions. I want to tell you some more of them. I have thought it all over, and I am determined that all through the year I shall eat only three meals a day with five nibbles between times. I'm going to give up water-melons, which I never eat, and when I converse with anybody I have solemnly promised myself never to make use of such words as assafoedita, peristyle, or cosmopolis. That last resolution is a great sacrifice for me because I am very fond of long words. They sound so learned; but I shall be firm. Assafoedita, peristyle, and cosmopolis until next year dawns shall be dead to me. I may take them on again next year; but if I do, I shall drop Mulligatawney, Portuguese, and pollywog from my vocabulary. I may even go so far as to drop vocabulary, although it is a word for which I have a strong affection. I am so attached to vocabulary as a word that I find myself murmuring it to myself in the dead of night."

"What does it mean?" asked the new doll.

"Vocabulary?" cried the Unwiseman. "Vocabulary? Don't you know what a vocabulary is?"

"I know," said Whistlebinkie. "It's an animal with an hump on its back."

"Nonsense," said the Unwiseman. "A vocabulary is nothing of the sort. It's a--a sort of little bureau talkers have to keep their words in. It's a sort of word-cabinet. I haven't really got one, but that's because I don't need one. I have so few words I can carry them in my head, and if I can't, I jot them down on a piece of paper. It's a splendid idea, that. It's helped me lots of times in conversation. I'm as fond of the word microcosm as I am of vocabulary, too, but I never can remember it, so I keep it on a piece of paper in my vest-pocket. Whenever I want to use it, I know just where to find it."

"And what does microcosm mean?" asked Mollie.

"I don't know," said the Unwiseman; "but few people do; and if I use it, not one person in a thousand would dare take me up, so I just sprinkle it around to suit myself."

As the Unwiseman spoke, the postman came to the door with a letter.

"Ah!" said the Unwiseman, opening it and reading it. "I am sorry to say that I must leave you now. I have an engagement with my hatter this afternoon, and if I don't go now he will be much disappointed."

"Is that letter from him?" asked Mollie.

"Oh no," said the Unwiseman, putting on his coat. "It is from myself. I thought about the engagement last night, and fearing that I might forget it I wrote a short note to myself reminding me of it. This is the note. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Mollie, and then, as the Unwiseman went off to meet his hatter, she and the others deemed it best to go home.

"But why did he say he expected you to call and then seemed surprised to see you?" asked the new doll.

"Oh--that's his way," said Mollie. "You'll get used to it in time."

But the new doll never did, for she was a proud wax-doll, and never learned to love the Unwiseman as I do for his sweet simplicity and never-ending good nature.

The]

ground was white with snow when Mollie awakened from a night of pleasant dreams. The sun shone brightly, and as the little girl looked out of her bed-room window it seemed to her as if the world looked like a great wedding-cake, and she was very much inclined to go out of doors and cut a slice out of it and gobble it up, just as if it were a wedding-cake and not a world.

Whistlebinkie agreed with her that that was the thing to do, but there were music-lessons and a little reading to be done before Mollie could hope to venture out, and as for Whistlebinkie, he was afraid to go out alone for fear of getting his whistle clogged up with snow. Consequently it was not until after luncheon that the two inseparable companions, accompanied by Mollie's new dog, Gyp, managed to get out of doors.

"Isn't it fine!" cried Mollie, as the snow crunched musically under her feet.

"Tsplendid!" whistled Whistlebinkie.

Gyp took a roll in the snow and gleefully barked to show that he too thought it wasn't half bad.

"I wonder what the Unwiseman is doing this morning," said Mollie, after they had romped about for some little while.

"I dare say he is throwing snow-balls at himself," said Whistlebinkie. "That's about as absurd a thing as any one can do, and he can always be counted upon to be doing things that haven't much sense to 'em."

"I've half a mind to go and see what he's doing," said Mollie.

"Let's," ejaculated Whistlebinkie, and Gyp indicated that he was ready for the call by rushing pell-mell over the snow-encrusted lawn in the direction of the spot where the Unwiseman's house had last stood.

"Gyp hasn't learned that the Unwiseman moves his house about every day," said Mollie.

"Dogs haven't much sense," observed Whistlebinkie, with a superior air. "It takes them a long time to learn things, and they can't whistle."

"That they haven't," came a voice from behind Whistlebinkie. "That little beast has destroyed eight lines of my poem with his horrid paws."

Mollie turned about quickly and there was the house of the Unwiseman, and sitting on the door-step was no less a person than the old gentleman himself, gazing ruefully at some rough, irregular lines which he had traced in the snow with a stick, and which were punctuated here and there by what were unmistakably the paw-marks of Gyp.

"Why--hullo!" said Mollie; "moved your house over here, have you?"

"Yes," replied the Unwiseman. "There is so much snow on the ground that I was afraid it would prevent your coming to see me if I let the house stay where it was, and I wanted to see you very much."

"It was very thoughtful of you," said Mollie.

"Yes; but I can't help that, you know," said the Unwiseman. "I've got to be thoughtful in my new business. Thoughts and snow and a stick are things I can't get along without, seeing that I haven't a slate or pen, ink and paper, in the house."

"You've got a new business, then, have you?" said Mollie.

"Yes," the Unwiseman answered. "I had to have. When the Christmas toy business failed I cast about to find some other that would pay for my eclaires. My friend the hatter wanted me to go in with him, but when I found out what he wanted me to do I gave it up."

"What did he want you to do?" asked Mollie.

"Why, there is a restaurant next door to his place where two or three hundred men went to get their lunch every day," said the Unwiseman. "He wanted me to go in there and carelessly knock their hats off the pegs and step on them and spoil them, so that they'd have to call in at his shop and buy new ones. My salary was to be fifteen a week."

"Fifteen dollars?" whistled Whistlebinkie in amazement, for to him fifteen dollars was a princely sum.

"No," returned the Unwiseman. "Fifteen eclaires, and I was to do my own fighting with the ones whose hats were spoiled. That wouldn't pay, because before the end of the week I'd be in the hospital, and I am told that people in hospitals are not allowed to eat eclaires."

"And so you declined to go into that business?" asked Mollie.

"Exactly," returned the Unwiseman. "I felt very badly on my way back home, too. I had hoped that the hatter wanted to employ me as a demonstrator."

"A what?" cried Whistlebinkie.

"A demonstrator," repeated the Unwiseman. "A demonstrator is one who demonstrates--a sort of a show-man. In the hat business he would be a man who should put on new styles of hats so as to show people how people looked in them. I suggested that to the hatter, but he said no, it wouldn't do. It would make customers hopeless. They couldn't hope to look as well in his hats as I would, and so they wouldn't buy them; and as he wasn't in the hat trade for pleasure, he didn't feel that he could afford a demonstrator like me."

"And what did you do then?" asked Mollie.

"I was so upset that I got on board of a horse-car to ride home, forgetting that the horse-cars all ran the other way and that I hadn't five cents in my pocket. That came out all right though. I didn't have to walk any further," said the Unwiseman. "The conductor was so mad when he found out that I couldn't pay my fare that he turned the car around and took me back to the hatter's again, where I'd got on. It was a great joke, but he never saw it."

And the Unwiseman roared with laughter as he thought of the joke on the conductor, and between you and me, I don't blame him.

"Well, I got home finally, and was just about to throw myself down with my head out of the window to weep when I had an idea," continued the Unwiseman.

"With your head out of the window?" echoed Mollie. "What on earth was that for?"

"So that my tears wouldn't fall on the carpet, of course," returned the Unwiseman. "What else? I always weep out of the window. There isn't any use of my dampening the house up and getting rheumatism just because it happens to be easier to weep indoors. When you're as old as I am, you have to be careful how you expose yourself to dampness. Rheumatism might be fun for you, because you can stay home from school, and be petted while you have it, but for me it's a very serious matter. I had it so bad once I couldn't lean my elbow on the dinner-table, and it spoiled all the pleasure of dining."

"Well--go on and tell us what your idea was," said Mollie, with difficulty repressing a smile. "Are you going to patent your scheme of weeping through a window?"

"No, indeed," said the Unwiseman. "I'm willing to let the world have the benefit of my discoveries, and, besides, patenting things costs money, and you have to send in a model of your invention. I can't afford to build a house and employ a man to cry through a window just to supply the government with a model. My idea was this. As my tears fell to the ground my ears and nose got very cold--almost froze, in fact. There was the scheme in a nutshell. Tears rhyme with ears, nose with froze. Why not write rhymes for the comic papers?"

"Oho!" said Mollie; "I see. You are going to be a poet."