"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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "If you want to speak some other language, you can go outside and speak it."]
"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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Pleasure ought to be spread."]
"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 b.u.t.ter, and it ought to be spread. You wouldn"t think of eating a whole pat of b.u.t.ter at one gulp, so why should you be greedy about your pleasure?"
"Tha.s.sounds 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."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "The old gentleman put the eclaire away."]
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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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."
"Tha.s.snice," 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 s.n.a.t.c.hel----"
"A small what?" demanded Mollie.
"A small s.n.a.t.c.hel," repeated the Unwiseman. "A s.n.a.t.c.hel is a bag with a handle to it."