"I do."
"Now if you wore a brown dress, would you cease to be a white girl and become a nigrio?"
"A what?" cried Mollie.
"A nigrio--a little brown darky girl," said the Unwiseman.
"No," said Mollie. "I"d still be a white or pink girl, whatever color I was before."
"Well--that"s the way with my white and gold parlor. It"s white and gold, and I give it a brown dress for protection. That"s all there is to it. I see you keep your vases on the mantel-piece. Queer notion that.
Rather dangerous, I should think."
Mollie laughed.
"Dangerous?" she cried. "Why not at all. They"re safe enough, and the mantel-piece is the place for them, isn"t it? Where do you keep yours?"
"I don"t have any. I don"t believe in "em," replied the Unwiseman. "They aren"t any good."
"They"re splendid," said Mollie. "They"re just the things to keep flowers in."
"What nonsense," said the Unwiseman, with a sneer. "The place to keep flowers is in a garden. You might just as well have a gla.s.s trunk in your parlor to hold your clothes in; or a big china bin to hold oats or gra.s.s in. It"s queer how you people who know things do things. But anyhow, if I did have vases I wouldn"t put "em on mantel-pieces, but on the floor. If they are on the floor they can"t fall off and break unless your house turns upside down."
"They might get stepped on," said Mollie.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I"m fond of the wet."]
"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, c.o.c.king 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 ma.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, laughing heartily, out of the white and gold parlor into the pantry.
[Ill.u.s.tration: V. The Unwiseman is Offended.
In which the Old Gentleman takes his leave.]
"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.