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"And the Unwiseman who lived there?"
"Yes, I remember him puffickly," said Whistlebinkie. "I think he knows less than any person I ever sawed."
"Not sawed but saw, Whistlebinkie," said Mollie, who was very anxious that her rubber doll should speak correctly.
"Oh, yes!" cried Whistlebinkie. "I think he sawed less than any man I ever knew – or rather – well – I guess you know what I mean, don't you?"
"Yes, I do," said Mollie, with a smile. "But tell me, Whistlebinkie dear, wouldn't you like to go with me, and pay the Unwiseman a visit?"
"Has he sent you a bill?" asked Whistlebinkie.
"What for, pray?" queried Mollie, with a glance of surprise at Whistlebinkie.
"To tell you that you owed him a visit, of course," said Whistlebinkie. "There isn't any use of our paying him anything unless we owe him something, is there?"
"Oh, I see!" said Mollie. "No, we don't owe him one, but I think we'd enjoy ourselves very much if we made him one."
"All right, let's," said Whistlebinkie.
"What'll we make it of, worsted or pasteboard?"
"Whistlebinkie," observed Mollie, severely, "you are almost as absurd as the old man himself. The idea of making a visit out of worsted or pasteboard! Come along. Stop your joking and let us start."
The rubber doll was quite willing to agree to this, and off they started. In a very little while they were down under the spreading branches of the great oak tree, but, singular to relate, the little red house that had stood there the last time they had called was not to be seen.
"Dear me!" cried Mollie, "what can have become of it, do you suppose, Whistlebinkie?"
"I give it up," said the rubber doll, scratching his hat so that he could think more easily. "Haven't an idea – unless the old man discovered that its roof was made of strawberry icing, and ate it up."
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" laughed some one from behind them.
Mollie and Whistlebinkie turned quickly, and lo and behold, directly behind them stood the little Unwiseman himself, trying to dig the oak tree up by the roots with a small teaspoon he held in his hand.
"The idea of my eating up my house! Hoh! What nonsense. Hoh!" he said, as the visitors turned.
"Well, what has become of it, then?" asked Mollie.
"I've moved it, that's what," said the Unwiseman. "I couldn't get any apples on this oak tree, so I moved my house over under the willow tree down by the brook."
"But you can't get apples on a willow tree, either, can you?" asked Mollie.
"I don't know yet," said the Unwiseman. "I haven't lived there long enough to find out, but I can try, and that's all anybody can do."
"And what are you doing with that teaspoon?" asked Whistlebinkie.
"I'm digging up this oak tree," said the Unwiseman. "I want to get the acorn it grew out of. I'm very fond of acorns, but I'm afraid to eat them, unless the tree that's in 'em has grown out. You see, I don't want to swallow an acorn, and have a great big tree like that grow up in me. It wouldn't be comfortable."
Whistlebinkie said he thought that was a very good idea, because there could not be any doubt that it would be extremely awkward for any man, wise or unwise, to have an oak tree sprouting up inside of him.
"What are you so anxious to know about my house for?" asked the Unwiseman, suddenly stopping short in his work with the teaspoon. "You don't want to rent it for the summer, do you?"
"Whistlebinkie and I have come down to call upon you, that's all," explained Mollie.
"Well now, really?" said the Unwiseman, rising, and dropping the teaspoon. "That's too bad, isn't it? Here you've come all this way to see me and I am out. I shall be so disappointed when I get home and find that you have been there and I not there to see you. Dear! Dear! How full of disappointments this world is. You couldn't come again last night, could you? I was home then."
"Not very well," said Whistlebinkie. "Mollie's father doesn't like it if we turn the clock back."
"Dear me! That's too bad, too! My!" said the old fellow, with a look of real sadness on his face. "What a disappointment, to be sure. You call and find me out! I do wish there was some way to arrange it, so that I might be at home when you call. You can't think of any, can you, Miss Whistlebinkie?"
"Perhaps now that you know we are coming," said Mollie, who, while her last name was not Whistlebinkie, did not think it necessary to pay any attention to the old man's mistake, which amused her very much, "perhaps now that you know we are coming you might run ahead and be there when we arrive."
"That's the scheme!" said Whistlebinkie.
"Yes, that's a first-rate plan," said the old man, nodding his head. "There's only one thing against it, perhaps."
"What's that?" asked Whistlebinkie.
"That I don't know," replied the Unwiseman, "which is very unfortunate, because it may be serious. For instance, suppose the objection should turn out to be in the shape of a policeman, who had a warrant to arrest me for throwing stones at somebody's pet tiger. What could I do?"
"But you haven't been throwing stones at anybody's pet tiger, have you?" asked Mollie.
"Not while I was awake," said the Unwiseman. "But I may have done it in my sleep, you know. People do lots of things in their sleep that they never do while awake. They snore, for instance; and one man I know, who always rides when he is awake, walks in his sleep."
"Let's try it, anyway," said Whistlebinkie. "It may be that there won't be any trouble, after all."
"Very well," assented the Unwiseman. "I'm willing if you are, only if I am arrested it will be all your fault, and you must promise to tell the policeman that it was you who threw the stones at the tiger and not I."
Mollie and Whistlebinkie feeling sure that nothing of the kind would happen, readily made the promise, and the queer little old man started off for his house as fast as his legs could carry him.
The two small visitors followed slowly, and in a few minutes had reached the Unwiseman's door down by the willow tree. The door was tightly closed, so they knocked. For a while there was no answer, and then they knocked again. In response to this they heard a shuffling step within, and a voice which they recognized as that of the Unwiseman called out:
"Is that a policeman? Because if it is, I'm not at home. I went out three weeks ago and won't be back again for six years, and, furthermore, I never threw stones at a pet tiger in my life unless I was asleep, and that don't count."
"We aren't policemen," said Mollie. "We're Mollie and Whistlebinkie come to see you."
"Oh, indeed!" cried the Unwiseman from within, as he threw the door open wide. "Why, what a pleasant surprise! I had no idea you were coming. Walk right in. So glad to see you."
Whistlebinkie giggled slightly through his beaver hat as he and Mollie, accepting the invitation, walked in and seated themselves in a droll little parlor that opened on the left-hand side of the hall.
"So this is your house, is it?" said Mollie, glancing about her with much interest.
"Yes," said the Unwiseman; "but, Miss Whistlebinkie, won't you kindly sit on the table instead of on that chair? So many people have been hurt by chairs breaking under them – many times more than are hurt from sitting on tables – that I have to be very careful. I have no doubt the chairs are strong enough to hold you, but I don't want to take any chances. I think it will rain next year, don't you?" he added. "And you haven't brought any umbrellas! Too bad, too bad. If you should get wet, you'd find it very damp. Really, you ought never to go out without an umbrella. I always do, but then I know enough to go in when it rains, so of course don't need one."
"I see you have a piano," said Whistlebinkie, taking in the furniture of the parlor.
"Yes," replied the Unwiseman. "It's a very fine one, too. It has lots of tunes locked up in it."
"Are you fond of music?" asked Mollie.
"No, I hate it," said the Unwiseman. "That's why I have the piano. There's just so much less music in the world. Nobody can get at the keys of that piano, so you see it's never played, which pleases me very much. If I were rich enough, I'd buy all the pianos, and organs, and fiddles, and horns, and drums in the world, and I'd keep 'em all locked up so that there never would be any more music at all."
"I am sorry to hear that," said Mollie. "I love music."
"Well," said the old man, generously, "you can have my share. Whenever anybody brings any music around where I am hereafter, I'll do it up in a package, and send it to you."
"Thank you very much," said Mollie. "It's very good of you."
"Oh, it's no favor to you, I am sure!" put in the Unwiseman, hastily. "In fact, it's the other way. I'm obliged to you for taking it off my hands. If you want to you can open the piano right away, and take out all the tunes there are in it. I'll go off on the mountains while you are doing it, so that it won't annoy me any."
"Oh, no!" said Mollie. "I'd a great deal rather have you to talk to than all the tunes in the piano."
"Very well," said the old man, with a smile of pleasure. "What shall we talk about, frogs?"
"I don't know anything about frogs," said Mollie.
"Neither do I," returned the Unwiseman. "I don't know the difference between a frog and a watch-chain, except that one chains watches and the other doesn't, but which does and which doesn't I haven't a notion."
"I see you have all your pictures with their faces turned to the wall," said Mollie, looking about the room again so as to avoid laughing in the Unwiseman's face. "What is that for?"
"That's to make them more interesting," replied the Unwiseman. "They're a very uninteresting lot of pictures, and I never could get anybody to look at 'em until I turned them hind side before, that way. Now everybody wants to see them."
Mollie rose up, and turned one of them about so that she could see it.
"It's very pretty," she said. "What is it a picture of – a meadow?"
"No. It's a picture of me," said the Unwiseman. "And it's one of the best I ever had taken."
"But I don't see you in it," said Mollie. "All I can see is a great field of grass and a big bowlder down in one corner."
"I know it," said the Unwiseman. "I'm lying on my back behind the bowlder asleep. If you could move the bowlder you could see me, but you can't. It's too heavy, and, besides, I think the paint is glued on."
"I hope you don't lie on the ground asleep very much," said Mollie, gravely, for she had taken a great liking to this strange old man who didn't know anything. "You might catch your death of cold."
"I didn't say I was lying on the ground," said the Unwiseman. "I said I was lying on my back. People ought not to catch cold lying on a nice warm back like mine."
"And do you live here all alone?" asked Mollie.
"Yes, I don't need anybody to live with. Other people know things, and it always makes them proud, and I don't like proud people."
"I hope you like me," said Mollie, softly.
"Yes, indeed, I do," cried the Unwiseman. "I like you and Whistlebinkie very much, because you don't either of you know anything either, and so, of course, you aren't stuck up like some people I meet who think just because they know the difference between a polar bear and a fog horn while I don't that they're so much better than I am. I like you, and I hope you will come and see me again."
"I will, truly," said Mollie.
"Very well – and that you may get back sooner you'd better run right home now. It is getting late, and, besides, I have an engagement."
"You?" asked Mollie. "What with?"
"Well, don't you tell anybody," said the Unwiseman; "but I'm going up to the village to the drug store. I promised to meet myself up there at six o'clock, and it's quarter past now, so I must hurry."
"But what on earth are you going to do there?" asked Mollie.
"I'm going to buy myself a beaver hat just like Whistlebinkie's," returned the Unwiseman, gleefully, "I've got to have something to keep my tablecloth in, and a beaver hat strikes me as just the thing."
Saying which the Unwiseman bowed Mollie and Whistlebinkie out, and sped off like lightning in the direction of the village drug store, but whether or not he succeeded in getting a beaver hat there I don't know, for he never told me.
III
In the House of the Unwiseman
In which Mollie Reads Some Strange Rules
A Few days later Mollie and Whistlebinkie were strolling together through the meadows when most unexpectedly they came upon the little red house of the Unwiseman.
"Why, I thought this house was under the willow tree," said Mollie.
"Sotwuz," whistled Whistlebinkie through his hat.
"What are you trying to say, Whistlebinkie?" asked Mollie.
"So – it – was," replied Whistlebinkie. "He must have moved it."
"But this isn't half as nice a place for it as the old one," said Mollie. "There isn't any shade here at all. Let's knock at the door, and see if he is at home. Maybe he will tell us why he has moved again."
Mollie tapped gently on the door, but received no response. Then she tried the knob, but the door was fastened.
"Nobody's home, I guess," she said.
"The back door is open," cried Whistlebinkie, running around to the rear of the house. "Come around this way, Mollie, and we can get in."
So around Mollie went, and sure enough there was the kitchen door standing wide open. A chicken was being grilled on the fire, and three eggs were in the pot boiling away so actively that they would undoubtedly have been broken had they not been boiling so long that they had become as hard as rocks.
"Isn't he the foolishest old man that ever was," said Mollie, as she caught sight of the chicken and the eggs. "That chicken will be burned to a crisp, and the eggs won't be fit to eat."
"I don't understand him at all," said Whistlebinkie. "Look at this notice to burglars he has pinned upon the wall."
Mollie looked and saw the following, printed in very awkward letters, hanging where Whistlebinkie had indicated:
Notiss to Burgylers.
If you have come to robb mi house you'd better save yourselfs the trouble. My silver spoons are all made of led, and my diamonds are only window glass. If you must steel something steel the boyled eggs, because I don't like boyled eggs anyhow. Also plese if you get overcome with remoss for having robbed a poor old man like me and want to give yourselfs upp to the poleese, you can ring up the poleese over the tellyfone in Miss Mollie Wisslebinkie's house up on Broadway.
Yoors trooly,
The Unwiseman.
P. S. If you here me coming while you are robbing me plese run, because I'm afraid of burgylers, and doo not want to mete enny.
