"What"s sky-sc.r.a.per in French?" demanded Whistlebinkie suddenly.
"They don"t have sky-sc.r.a.pers in French," retorted the old gentleman.
"So your question, like most of the others you ask, is very very foolish."
"You think you can get along all right then, Mr. Me?" asked Mollie, gazing proudly at the old man and marvelling as to the amount of study he must have done in two days.
"I can if I can only get people talking the way I want "em to," replied the Unwiseman. "I"ve really learned a lot of very polite conversation.
For instance something like this:
"Do you wish to go anywhere?
No I do not wish to go anywhere.
Why don"t you wish to go somewhere?
Because I"ve been everywhere.
You must have seen much.
No I have seen nothing.
Is not that rather strange?
No it is rather natural.
Why?
Because to go everywhere one must travel too rapidly to see anything."
"That you see," the Unwiseman went on, "goes very well at a five o"clock tea. The only trouble would be to get it started, but if I once got it going right, why I could rattle it off in French as easy as falling off a log."
"Smity interesting conversation," said Whistlebinkie really delighted.
"I"m glad you find it so," replied the Unwiseman.
"It"s far more interesting in French than it is in English."
"Givus-smore," whistled Whistlebinkie.
"Give us what?" demanded the Unwiseman.
"Some-more," said Whistlebinkie.
"Well here is a very nice bit that I can do if somebody gives me the chance," said the Unwiseman. "It begins:
"Lend me your silver backed hand-gla.s.s.
Certainly. Who is that singing in the drawing room?
It is my daughter.
It is long since I heard anyone sing so well.
She has been taking lessons only two weeks.
Does she practice on the phonograph or on her Aunt"s upright piano?
On neither. She accompanies herself upon the banjo.
I think she sings almost as well as Miss S.
Miss S. has studied for three weeks but Marietta has a better ear.
What is your wife"s grandmother knitting?
A pair of ear-tabs for my nephew Jacques.
Ah--then your nephew Jacques too has an ear?
My nephew Jacques has two ears.
What a musical family!"
"Spul-lendid!" cried Whistlebinkie rapturously. "When do you think you can use that?"
"O I may be invited off to a country house to spend a week, somewhere outside of Paris," said the Unwiseman, "and if I am, and the chance comes up for me to hold that nice little chat with my host, why it will make me very popular with everybody. People like to have you take an interest in their children, especially when they are musical. Then I have learned this to get off at the breakfast-table to my hostess:
"I have slept well. I have two mattresses and a spring mattress.
Will you have another pillow?
No thank you I have a comfortable bolster.
Is one blanket sufficient for you?
Yes, but I would like some wax candles and a box of matches."
"That will show her that I appreciate all the comforts of her beautiful household, and at the same time feel so much at home that I am not afraid to ask for something else that I happen to want. The thing that worries me a little about the last is that there might be an electric light in the room, so that asking for a wax candle and a box of matches would sound foolish. I gather from the lesson, however, that it is customary in France to ask for wax candles and a box of matches, so I"m going to do it anyhow. There"s nothing like following the customs of the natives when you can."
"I"d like to hear you say some of that in French," said Whistlebinkie.
"Oh you wouldn"t understand it, Whistlebinkie," said the Unwiseman.
"Still I don"t mind."
And the old man rattled off the following:
"Avvy-voo kelker chose ah me dire? Avvy-voo bien dormy la nooit dernyere? Savvy-voo kieskersayker cetum la avec le nez rouge?
Kervooly-voo-too-der-sweet-silver-plate-o-see-le-mem. Donny-moi des boogies et des alloomettes avec burr et sooker en ta.s.se. La Voila.
Kerpensy-voo de cette comedie mon cher mounseer de Whistlebinkie?"
"Mercy!" cried Whistlebinkie. "What a language! I don"t believe I _ever_ could learn to speak it."
"You learn to speak it, Whistlebinkie?" laughed the old gentleman. "You?
Well I guess not. I don"t believe you could even learn to squeak it."
With which observation the Unwiseman hopped back into his carpet-bag, for the conductor of the train was seen coming up the platform of the railway station, and the old gentleman as usual was travelling without a ticket.
"I"d rather be caught by an English conductor if I"m going to be caught at all," he remarked after the train had started and he was safe. "For I find in looking it over that all my talk in French is polite conversation, and I don"t think there"d be much chance for that in a row with a conductor over a missing railway ticket."
IX.
IN PARIS
The Unwiseman was up bright and early the next morning. Mollie and Whistlebinkie had barely got their eyes open when he came knocking at the door.
"Better get up, Mollie," he called in. "It"s fine weather and I"m going to call on the Umpire. The chances are that on a beautiful day like this he"ll have a parade and I wouldn"t miss it for a farm."
"What Umpire are you talking about?" Mollie replied, opening the door on a crack.
"Why Napoleon Bonaparte," said the Unwiseman. "Didn"t you ever hear of him? He"s the man that came up here from Corsica and picked the crown up on the street where the king had dropped it by mistake, and put it on his own head and made people think he was the whole roil family. He was smart enough for an American and I want to tell him so."