"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-b.u.t.ton 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Unwiseman drops words out of his vocabulary.]
"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 a.s.safoedita, 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.
a.s.safoedita, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: VIII. The Unwiseman Turns Poet.
In which the Unwiseman goes into literature.
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-b.a.l.l.s 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," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.