Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad

The old man's eyes had fallen upon another sign which read "Robe Maker By Special Appointment to T. R. H. The King and The Queen."

"Here's the place, Mollie, where they make the King's clothes," he said. "Now for it."

Hand in hand the three travellers entered the tailor's shop.

"How do you do, Mr. Snip," said the Unwiseman addressing the gentlemanly manager of the shop whose name was on the sign without and who approached him as affably as though he were not himself the greatest tailor in the British Isles – for he couldn't have been the King's tailor if he had not been head and shoulders above all the rest. "I had a very pleasant little chat with his h. r. h. about you yesterday. I could see by the fit of his red jacket that you were the best tailor in the world, and while he didn't say very much on the subject the King gave me to understand that you're pretty nearly all that you should be."

"Verry gracious of his Majesty I am sure," replied the tailor, washing his hands in invisible soap, and bowing most courteously.

"Now the chances are," continued the Unwiseman, "that as soon as the King receives a letter I wrote to him from Liverpool about how to stamp out this horrible habit his subjects have of littering up the street with aitches, clogging traffic and overworking the Roberts picking 'em up, he'll ask me to settle down over here and be a Duke. Naturally I don't want to disappoint him because I consider the King to be a mighty nice man, but unless I can get a first-class Duke's costume – "

"We make a specialty of Ducal robes, your Grace," said the Tailor, manifesting a great deal of interest in his queer little customer.

"Hold on a minute," cried the Unwiseman. "Don't you call me that yet – I shant be a grace until I've decided to accept. What does an A-1 Duke's clothes cost?"

"You mean the full State – " began the Tailor.

"I come from New York State," said the Unwiseman. "Yes – I guess that's it. New York's the fullest State in the Union. How much for a New York State Duke?"

"The State Robes will cost – um – let me see – I should think about fifteen hundred pounds, your Lordship," calculated the Tailor. "Of course it all depends on the quality of the materials. Velvets are rawther expensive these days."

Whistlebinkie gave a long low squeak of astonishment. Mollie gasped and the Unwiseman turned very pale as he tremblingly repeated the figure.

"Fif-teen-hundred-pounds? Why," he added turning to Mollie, "I'd have to live about seven thousand years to get the wear out of it at a dollar a year."

"Yes, your Lordship – or more. It all depends upon how much gold your Lordship requires – " observed the Tailor.

"Seems to me I'd need about four barrels of it," said the Unwiseman, "to pay a bill like that."

"We have made robes costing as high as 10,000 pounds," continued the Tailor. "But they of course were of unusual magnificence – and for special jubilee celebrations you know."

"You haven't any ready made Duke's clothes on hand for less?" inquired the Unwiseman. "You know I'm not so awfully particular about the fit. My figure's a pretty good one, but after all I don't want to thrust it on people."

"We do not deal in ready made garments," said the Tailor coldly.

"Well I guess I'll have to give it up then," said the Unwiseman, "unless you know where I could hire a suit, or maybe buy one second-hand from some one of your customers who's going to get a new one."

"We do not do that kind of trade, sir," replied the Tailor, haughtily.

"Well say, Mr. Snip – ain't there anything else a chap can be made beside a Duke that ain't quite so dressy?" persisted the old gentleman. "I don't want to disappoint Mr. King you know."

"Oh as for that," observed the Tailor, "there are ordinary peerages, baronetcies and the like. His Majesty might make you a Knight," he added sarcastically.

"That sounds good," said the Unwiseman. "About what would a Knight gown cost me – made out of paper muslin or something that's a wee bit cheaper than solid gold and velvet?"

This perfectly innocent and sincerely asked question was never answered, for Mr. Snip the Tailor made up his mind that the Unwiseman was guying him and acted accordingly.

"Jorrocks!" he cried haughtily to the office boy, a fresh looking lad who had broken out all over in brass buttons. "Jorrocks, show this 'ere party the door."

Whereupon Mr. Snip retired and Jorrocks with a wink at Whistlebinkie showed the travellers out.

"Well did you ever!" ejaculated the Unwiseman. "You couldn't have expected any haughtier haughtiness than that from the King himself."

"He was pretty proud," said Mollie, with a smile, for to tell the truth she had had all she could do all through the interview to keep from giggling.

"He was proud all right, but I didn't notice anything very pretty about him," said the Unwiseman. "I'm going to write to the King about both those places, because I don't believe he knows what kind of people they are with their bogus muffins and hoity-toity manners."

They walked solemnly along the street in the direction of the hotel.

"I won't even wait for the mail," said the Unwiseman. "I'll walk over to the Palace now and tell him. That tailor might turn some real important American out of his shop in the same way and then there'd be a war over it."

"O I wouldn't," said Mollie, who was always inclined toward peace-making. "Wait and write him a letter."

"Send-im-a-wireless-smessage," whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Good idea!" said the Unwiseman. "That'll save postage and it'll get to the King right away instead of having to be read first by one of his Secretaries."

So it happened that that night the Unwiseman climbed up to the roof of the hotel and sent the following wireless telegram to the King:

My dear Mr. King:

That tailor of yours seems to think he's a Grand Duke in disguise. In the first place he wanted me to pay over seven thousand dollars for a Duke's suit and when I asked him the price of a Knight-gown he told Jorrocks to show me the door, which I had already seen and hadn't asked to see again. He's a very imputinent tailor and if I were you I'd bounce him as we say in America. Furthermore they sell bogus muffins up at that specially appointed bake-shop of yours. I think you ought to know these things. Nations have gone to war for less.

Yours trooly,The Unwiseman.

P.S. I've been thinking about that Duke proposition and I don't think I care to go into that business. Folks at home haven't as much use for 'em as they have for sour apples which you can make pie out of. So don't do anything further in the matter.

"There," said the Unwiseman as he tossed this message off into the air. "That saves me $8.50 anyhow, and I guess it'll settle the business of those bogus muffin people and that high and mighty tailor."

VII

THE UNWISEMAN VISITS THE BRITISH MUSEUM

"What's the matter, Mr. Me?" asked Mollie one morning after they had been in London for a week. "You look very gloomy this morning. Aren't you feeling well?"

"O I'm feeling all right physically," said the Unwiseman. "But I'm just chock full of gloom just the same and I want to get away from here as soon as I can. Everything in the whole place is bogus."

"Oh Mr. Me! you mustn't say that!" protested Mollie.

"Well if it ain't there's something mighty queer about it anyhow, and I just don't like it," said the Unwiseman. "I know they've fooled me right and left, and I'm just glad George Washington licked 'em at Bunco Hill and pushed 'em off our continent on the double quick."

"What is the particular trouble?" asked Mollie.

"Well, in the first place," began the old gentleman, "that King we saw the other day wasn't a real king at all – just a sort of decoy king they keep outside the Palace to shoo people off and keep them from bothering the real one; and in the second place the Prince of Whales aint' a whale at all. He ain't even a shiner. He's just a man. I don't see what right they have to fool people the way they do. They wouldn't dare run a circus that way at home."

Mollie laughed, and Whistlebinkie squeaked with joy.

"You didn't really expect him to be a whale, did you?" Mollie asked.

"Why of course I did," said the Unwiseman. "Why not? They claim over here that Britannia rules the waves, don't they?"

"They certainly do," said Mollie gravely.

"Then it's natural to suppose they have a big fish somewhere to represent 'em," said the Unwiseman. "The King can't go sloshing around under the ocean saying howdido to porpoises and shad and fellers like that. It's too wet and he'd catch his death of cold, so I naturally thought the Prince of Whales looked after that end of the business, and now I find he's not even a sardine. It's perfectly disgusting."

"I knew-he-wasn't-a-fish," said Whistlebinkie.

"Well you always were smarter than anybody else," growled the Unwiseman. "You know a Roc's egg isn't a pebble without anybody telling you I guess. You were born with the multiplication table in your hat, but as for me I'm glad I've got something to learn. I guess carrying so much real live information around in your hat is what makes you squeak so."

The old gentleman paused a moment and then he went on again.

"What I'm worrying most about is that mock king," he said. "Here I've gone and invited him over to America, and offered to present him with the freedom of my kitchen stove and introduce him to my burgular. Suppose he comes? What on earth am I going to do? I can't introduce him as the real king, and if I pass him off for a bogus king everybody'll laugh at me, and accuse me of bringing my burgular into bad company."

"How did you find it out?" asked Mollie sadly, for she had already written home to her friends giving them a full account of their reception by his majesty.

"Why I went up to the Palace this morning to see why he hadn't answered my letter and this time there was another man there, wearing the same suit of clothes, bear-skin hat, red jacket and all," explained the Unwiseman. "I was just flabbergasted and then it flashed over me all of a sudden that there might be a big conspiracy on hand to kidnap the real king and put his enemies on the throne. It was all so plain. Certainly no king would let anybody else wear his clothes, so this chap must have stolen them and was trying to pass himself off for Edward S. King himself."

"Mercy!" cried Mollie. "What did you do? Call for help?"

"No sirree – I mean no ma'am!" returned the Unwiseman. "That wouldn't help matters any. I ran down the street to a telephone office and rang up the palace. I told 'em the king had been kidnapped and that a bogus king was paradin' up and down in front of the Palace with the royal robes on. I liked that first king so much I couldn't bear to think of his lyin' off somewhere in a dungeon-cell waiting to have his head chopped off. And what do you suppose happened? Instead of arresting the mock king they wanted to arrest me, and I think they would have if a nice old gentleman in a high hat and a frock coat like mine, only newer, hadn't driven up at that minute, bowing to everybody, and entered the Palace yard with the whole crowd giving him three cheers. Then what do you suppose? They tried to pass him off on me as the real king – why he was plainer than those muffins and looked for all the world like a good natured life insurance agent over home."

"And they didn't arrest you?" asked Mollie, anxiously.

"No indeed," laughed the Unwiseman. "I had my carpet-bag along and when the pleeceman wasn't looking I jumped into it and waited till they'd all gone. Of course they couldn't find me. I don't believe they've got any king over here at all."

"Then you'll never be a Duke?" said Whistlebinkie.

"No sirree!" ejaculated the Unwiseman. "Not while I know how to say no. If they offer it to me I'll buy a megaphone to say no through so's they'll be sure to hear it. Then there's that other wicked story about London Bridge falling down. I heard some youngsters down there by the River announcing the fact and I nearly ran my legs off trying to get there in time to see it fall and when I arrived it not only wasn't falling down but was just ram-jam full of omnibuses and cabs and trucks. Really I never knew anybody anywhere who could tell as many fibs in a minute as these people over here can."

"Well never mind, Mr. Me," said Mollie, soothingly. "Perhaps things have gone a little wrong with you, and I don't blame you for feeling badly about the King, but there are other things here that are very interesting. Come with Whistlebinkie and me to the British Museum and see the Mummies."

"Pooh!" retorted the Unwiseman. "I'd rather see a basket of figs."

"You never can tell," persisted Mollie. "They may turn out to be the most interesting things in all the world."

"I can tell," said the Unwiseman. "I've already seen 'em and they haven't as much conversation as a fried oyster. I went down there yesterday and spent two hours with 'em, and a more unapproachable lot you never saw in your life. I was just as polite to 'em as I knew how to be. Asked 'em how they liked the British climate. Told 'em long stories of my house at home. Invited a lot of 'em to come over and meet my burgular just as I did the King and not a one of 'em even so much as thanked me. They just stood off there in their glass cases and acted as if they never saw me, and if they did, hadn't the slightest desire to see me again. You don't catch me calling on them a second time."

"But there are other things in the Museum, aren't there?" asked Mollie.

The Unwiseman's gloom disappeared for a moment in a loud burst of laughter.

"Such a collection of odds and ends," he cried, with a sarcastic shake of his head. "I never saw so much broken crockery in all my life. It looks to me as if they'd bought up all the old broken china in the world. There are tea-pots without nozzles by the thousand. Old tin cans, all rusted up and with dents in 'em from everywhere. Cracked plates by the million, and no end of water-pitchers with the handles broken off, and chipped vases and goodness knows what all. And they call that a museum! Just you give me a half a dozen bricks and a crockery shop over in America and in five minutes I'll make that British Museum stuff look like a sixpence. When I saw it first, I was pretty mad to think I'd taken the trouble to go and look at it, and then as I went on and couldn't find a whole tea-cup in the entire outfit, and saw people with catalogues in their hands saying how wonderful everything was, I just had to sit down on the floor and roar with laughter."

"But the statuary, Mr. Me," said Mollie. "That was pretty fine I guess, wasn't it? I've heard it's a splendid collection."

"Worse than the crockery," laughed the Unwiseman. "There's hardly a statue in the whole place that isn't broken. Seems to me they're the most careless lot of people over here with their museums. Half the statues didn't have any heads on 'em. A good quarter of them had busted arms and legs, and on one of 'em there wasn't anything left but a pair of shoulder blades and half a wing sticking out at the back. It looked more like a quarry than a museum to me, and in a mighty bad state of repair even for a quarry. That was where they put me out," the old gentleman added.

"Put you out?" cried Mollie. "Oh Mr. Me – you don't mean to say they actually put you out of The British Museum?"

"I do indeed," said the Unwiseman with a broad grin on his face. "They just grabbed me by my collar and hustled me along the floor to the great door and dejected me just as if I didn't have any more feeling than their old statues. It's a wonder the way I landed I wasn't as badly busted up as they are."

"But what for? You were not misbehaving yourself, were you?" asked Mollie, very much disturbed over this latest news.

"Of course not," returned the Unwiseman. "Quite the contrary opposite. I was trying to help them. I came across the great big statue of some Greek chap – I've forgotten his name – something like Hippopotomes, or something of the sort – standing up on a high pedestal, with a sign,

"HANDS OFF

"hanging down underneath it. When I looked at it I saw at once that it not only had its hands off, but was minus a nose, two ears, one under-lip and a right leg, so I took out my pencil and wrote underneath the words Hands Off:

"LIKEWISE ONE NOZEONE PARE OF EARSA LEG AND ONE LIPP

"It seemed to me the sign should ought to be made complete, but I guess they thought different, because I'd hardly finished the second P on lip when whizz bang, a lot of attendants came rushing up to me and the first thing I knew I was out on the street rubbing the back of my head and wondering what hit me."

"Poor old chap!" said Mollie sympathetically.

"Guess-you-wisht-you-was-mader-ubber-like-me!" whistled Whistlebinkie trying hard to repress his glee.

"What's that?" demanded the Unwiseman.

"I-guess-you-wished-you-were-made-of-rubber-like-me!" explained Whistlebinkie.

"Never in this world," retorted the Unwiseman scornfully. "If I'd been made of rubber like you I'd have bounced up and down two or three times instead of once, and I'm not so fond of hitting the sidewalk with myself as all that. But I didn't mind. I was glad to get out. I was so afraid all the time somebody'd come along and accuse me of breaking their old things that it was a real relief to find myself out of doors and nothing broken that didn't belong to me."

"They didn't break any of your poor old bones, did they?" asked Mollie, taking the Unwiseman's hand affectionately in her own.

"No – worse luck – they did worse than that," said the old gentleman growing very solemn again. "They broke that bottle of my native land that I always carry in my coat-tail pocket and loosened the cork in my fog bottle in the other, so that now I haven't more than a pinch of my native land with me to keep me from being homesick, and all of the fog I was saving up for my collection has escaped. But I don't care. I don't believe it was real fog, but just a mixture of soot and steam they're trying to pass off for the real thing. Bogus like everything else, and as for my native land, I've got enough to last me until I get home if I'm careful of it. The only thing I'm afraid of is that in scooping what I could of it up off the sidewalk I may have mixed a little British soil in with it. I'd hate to have that happen because just at present British soil isn't very popular with me."

"Maybe it's bogus too," snickered Whistlebinkie.

"So much the better," said the Unwiseman. "If it ain't real I can manage to stand it."

"Then you don't think much of the British Museum?" said Mollie.

"Well it ain't my style," said the Unwiseman, shaking his head vigorously. "But there was one thing that pleased me very much about it," the old man went on, his eye lighting with real pleasure and his voice trembling with patriotic pride, "and that's some of the things they didn't have in it. It was full of things the British have captured in Greece and Italy and Africa and pretty nearly everywhere else – mummies from Egypt, pieces of public libraries from Athens, second-story windows from Rome, and little dabs of architecture from all over the map except the United States. That made me laugh. They may have had Cleopatra's mummy there, but I didn't notice any dried up specimens of the Decalculation of Independence lying around in any of their old glass cases. They had a whole side wall out of some Roman capitol building perched up on a big wooden platform, but I didn't notice any domes from the Capitol at Washington or back piazzas from the White House on exhibition. There was a lot of busted old statuary from Greece all over the place, but nary a statue of Liberty from New York harbor, or figger of Andrew Jackson from Philadelphia, or bust of Ralph Waldo Longfellow from Boston Common, sitting up there among their trophies – only things hooked from the little fellers, and dug up from places like Pompey-two-eyes where people have been dead so long they really couldn't watch out for their property. It don't take a very glorious conqueror to run off with things belonging to people they can lick with one hand, and it pleased me so when I couldn't find even a finger-post, or a drug-store placard, or a three dollar shoe store sign from America in the whole collection that my chest stuck out like a pouter pigeon's and bursted my shirt-studs right in two. They'd have had a lump chipped off Independence Hall at Philadelphia, or a couple of chunks of Bunco Hill, or a sliver off the Washington Monument there all right if they could have got away with it, but they couldn't, and I tell you I wanted to climb right up top of the roof and sing Yankee Doodle and crow like a rooster the minute I noticed it, I felt so good."

"Three cheers for us," roared Whistlebinkie.

"That's the way to talk, Fizzledinkie," cried the old gentleman gleefully, and grasping Whistlebinkie by the hand he marched up and down Mollie's room singing the Star Spangled Banner – the Unwiseman in his excitement called it the Star Spangled Banana – and Columbia the Gem of the Ocean at the top of his lungs, and Mollie was soon so thrilled that she too joined in.

"Well," said Mollie, when the patriotic ardor of her two companions had died down a little. "What are you going to do, Mr. Me? We've got to stay here two days more. We don't start for Paris until Saturday."

"O don't bother about me," said the old man pleasantly. "I've got plenty to do. I've bought a book called 'French in Five Lessons' and I'm going to retire to my carpet-bag until you people are ready to start for France. I've figured it out that I can read that book through in two days if I don't waste too much of my time eating and sleeping and calling on kings and queens and trying to buy duke's clothes for $8.50, and snooping around British Museums and pricing specially appointed royal muffins, so that by the time you are ready to start for Paris I'll be in shape to go along. I don't think it's wise to go into a country where they speak another language without knowing just a little about it, and if 'French in Five Lessons' is what it ought to be you'll think I'm another Joan of Ark when I come out of that carpet-bag."

And so the queer old gentleman climbed into his carpet-bag, which Mollie placed for him over near the window where the light was better and settled down comfortably to read his new book, "French in Five Lessons."

"I'm glad he's going to stay in there," said Whistlebinkie, as he and Mollie started out for a walk in Hyde Park. "Because I wouldn't be a bit surprised after all he's told us if the pleese were looking for him."

"Neither should I," said Mollie. "If what he says about the British Museum is true and they really haven't any things from the United States in there, there's nothing they'd like better than to capture an American and put him up in a glass case along with those mummies."

All of which seemed to prove that for once the Unwiseman was a very wise old person.

VIII

THE UNWISEMAN'S FRENCH

The following two days passed very slowly for poor Mollie. It wasn't that she was not interested in the wonders of the historic Tower which she visited and where she saw all the crown jewels, a lot of dungeons and a splendid collection of armor and rare objects connected with English history; nor in the large number of other things to be seen in and about London from Westminster Abbey to Hampton Court and the Thames, but that she was lonesome without the Unwiseman. Both she and Whistlebinkie had approached the carpet-bag wherein the old gentleman lay hidden several times, and had begged him to come out and join them in their wanderings, but he not only wouldn't come out, but would not answer them. Possibly he did not hear when they called him, possibly he was too deeply taken up by his study of French to bother about anything else – whatever it was that caused it, he was as silent as though he were deaf and dumb.

"Less-sopen-thbag," suggested Whistlebinkie. "I-don'-bleeve-hes-sinthera-tall."

"Oh yes he's in there," said Mollie. "I've heard him squeak two or three times."

"Waddeesay?" said Whistlebinkie.

"What?" demanded Mollie, with a slight frown.

"What-did-he-say?" asked Whistlebinkie, more carefully.

"I couldn't quite make out," said Mollie. "Sounded like a little pig squeaking."

"I guess it was-sfrench," observed Whistlebinkie with a broad grin. "Maybe he was saying Wee-wee-wee. That's what little pigs say, and Frenchmen too – I've heard 'em."