Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad

"Very likely," said Mollie. "I don't know what wee-wee-wee means in little pig-talk, but over in Paris it means, 'O yes indeed, you're perfectly right about that.'"

"He'll never be able to learn French," laughed Whistlebinkie. "That is not so that he can speak it. Do you think he will?"

"That's what I'm anxious to see him for," said Mollie. "I'm just crazy to find out how he is getting along."

But all their efforts to get at the old gentleman were, as I have already said, unavailing. They knocked on the bag, and whispered and hinted and tried every way to draw him out but it was not until the little party was half way across the British Channel, on their way to France, that the Unwiseman spoke. Then he cried from the depths of the carpet bag:

"Hi there – you people outside, what's going on out there, an earthquake?"

"Whatid-i-tellu'" whistled Whistlebinkie. "That ain't French. Thass-singlish."

"Hallo-outside ahoy!" came the Unwiseman's voice again. "Slidyvoo la slide sur le top de cette carpet-bag ici and let me out!"

"That's French!" cried Mollie clapping her hands ecstatically together.

"Then I understand French too!" said Whistlebinkie proudly, "because I know what he wants. He wants to get out."

"Do you want to come out, Mr. Unwiseman?" said Mollie bending over the carpet-bag, and whispering through the lock.

"Wee-wee-wee," said the Unwiseman.

"More-pig-talk," laughed Whistlebinkie. "He's the little pig that went to market."

"No – it was the little pig that stayed at home that said wee, wee, wee all day long," said Mollie.

"Je desire to be lettyd out pretty quick if there's un grand big earthquake going on," cried the Unwiseman.

Mollie slid the nickeled latch on the top of the carpet-bag along and in a moment it flew open.

"Kesserkersayker what's going on out ici?" demanded the Unwiseman, as he popped out of the bag. "Je ne jammy knew such a lot of motiong. London Bridge ain't falling down again, is it?"

"No," said Mollie. "We're on the boat crossing the British Channel."

"Oh – that's it eh?" said the Unwiseman gazing about him anxiously, and looking rather pale, Mollie thought. "Well I thought it was queer. When I went to sleep last night everything was as still as Christmas, and when I waked up it was movier than a small boy in a candy store. So we're on the ocean again eh?"

"Not exactly," said Mollie. "We're on what they call the Channel."

"Seems to me the waves are just as big as they are on the ocean, and the water just as wet," said the Unwiseman, as the ship rose and fell with the tremendous swell of the sea, thereby adding much to his uneasiness.

"Yes – but it isn't so wide," explained Mollie. "It isn't more than thirty miles across."

"Then I don't see why they don't build a bridge over it," said the Unwiseman. "This business of a little bit of a piece of water putting on airs like an ocean ought to be put a stop to. This motion has really very much unsettled – my French. I feel so queer that I can't remember even what la means, and as for kesserkersay, I've forgotten if it's a horse hair sofa or a pair of brass andirons, and I had it all in my head not an hour ago. O – d-dud-dear!"

The Unwiseman plunged headlong into his carpet-bag again and pulled the top of it to with a snap.

"Oh my, O me!" he groaned from its depths. "O what a wicked channel to behave this way. Mollie – Moll-lie – O Mollie I say."

"Well?" said Mollie.

"Far from it – very unwell," groaned the Unwiseman. "Will you be good enough to ask the cook for a little salad oil?"

"Mercy," cried Mollie. "You don't want to mix a salad now do you?"

"Goodness, no!" moaned the Unwiseman. "I want you to pour it on those waves and sort of clam them down and then, if you don't mind, take the carpet-bag – "

"Yes," said Mollie.

"And chuck it overboard," groaned the Unwiseman. "I – I don't feel as if I cared ever to hear the dinner-bell again."

Poor Unwiseman! He was suffering the usual fate of those who cross the British Channel, which behaves itself at times as if it really did have an idea that it was a great big ocean and had an ocean's work to do. But fortunately this uneasy body of water is not very wide, and it was not long before the travellers landed safe and sound on the solid shores of France, none the worse for their uncomfortable trip.

"I guess you were wise not to throw me overboard after all," said the Unwiseman, as he came out of the carpet-bag at Calais. "I feel as fine as ever now and my lost French has returned."

"I'd like to hear some," said Mollie.

"Very well," replied the Unwiseman carelessly. "Go ahead and ask me a question and I'll answer it in French."

"Hm! Let me see," said Mollie wondering how to begin. "Have you had breakfast?"

"Wee Munsieur, j'ay le pain," replied the Unwiseman gravely.

"What does that mean?" asked Mollie, puzzled.

"He says he has a pain," said Whistlebinkie with a smile.

"Pooh! Bosh – nothing of the sort," retorted the Unwiseman. "Pain is French for bread. When I say 'j'ay le pain' I mean that I've got the bread."

"Are you the jay?" asked Whistlebinkie with mischief in his tone.

"Jay in French is I have – not a bird, stupid," retorted the Unwiseman indignantly.

"Funny way to talk," sniffed Whistlebinkie. "I should think pain would be a better word for pie, or something else that gives you one."

"That's because you don't know," said the Unwiseman. "In addition to the pain I've had oofs."

"Oooffs?" cried Whistlebinkie. "What on earth are oooffs?"

"I didn't say oooffs," retorted the Unwiseman, mocking Whistlebinkie's accent. "I said oofs. Oofs is French for eggs. Chickens lay oofs in France. I had two hard boiled oofs, and my pain had burr and sooker on it."

"Burr and sooker?" asked Mollie, wonderingly.

"I know what burr means – it's French for chestnuts," guessed Whistlebinkie. "He had chestnuts on his bread."

"Nothing of the sort," said the Unwiseman. "Burr is French for butter and has nothing to do with chestnuts. Over here in France a lady goes into a butter store and also says avvy-voo-doo burr, and the man behind the counter says wee, wee, wee, jay-doo-burr. Jay le bonn-burr. That means, yes indeed I've got some of the best butter in the market, ma'am."

"And then what does the lady say?" asked Whistlebinkie.

The Unwiseman's face flushed, and he looked very much embarrassed. It always embarrassed the poor old fellow to have to confess that there was something he didn't know. Unwisemen as a rule are very sensitive.

"That's as far as the conversation went in my French in Five Lessons," he replied. "And I think it was far enough. For my part I haven't the slightest desire to know what the lady said next. Conversation on the subject of butter doesn't interest me. She probably asked him how much it was a pound, however, if not knowing what she said is going to keep you awake nights."

"What's sooker?" asked Mollie.

"Sooker? O that's what the French people call sugar," explained the Unwiseman.

"Pooh!" ejaculated Whistlebinkie, scornfully. "What's the use of calling it sooker? Sooker isn't any easier to say than sugar."

"It's very much like it, isn't it?" said Mollie.

"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "They just drop the H out of sugar, and put in the K in place of the two Gees. I think myself when two words are so much alike as sooker and shoogger it's foolish to make two languages of 'em."

"Tell me something more to eat in French," said Whistlebinkie.

"Fromidge," said the Unwiseman bluntly.

"Fromidge? What's that!" asked Whistlebinkie.

"Cheese," said the Unwiseman. "If you want a cheese sandwich all you've got to do is to walk into a calf – calf is French for restaurant – call the waiter and say 'Un sandwich de fromidge, silver plate,' and you'll get it if you wait long enough. Silver plate means if you please. The French are very polite people."

"But how do you call the waiter?" asked Whistlebinkie.

"You just lean back in a chair and call garkon," said the Unwiseman. "That's what the book says, but I've heard Frenchmen in London call it gas on. I'm going to stick to the book, because it might turn out to be an English waiter and it would be very unpleasant to have him turn the gas on every time you called him."

"I should say so," cried Whistlebinkie. "You might get gas fixturated."

"You never would," said the Unwiseman.

"Anybody who isn't choked by your conversation could stand all the gas fixtures in the world."

"I don't care much for cheese, anyhow," said Whistlebinkie. "Is there any French for Beef?"

"O wee, wee, wee!" replied the Unwiseman. "Beef is buff in French. Donny-moi-de-buff – "

"Donny-moi-de-buff!" jeered Whistlebinkie, after a roar of laughter. "Sounds like baby-talk."

"Well it ain't," returned the Unwiseman severely. "Even Napoleon Bonaparte had to talk that way when he wanted beef and I guess the kind of talk that was good enough for a great Umpire like him is good enough for a rubber squeak like you."

"Then you like French do you, Mr. Me?" asked Mollie.

"Oh yes – well enough," said the Unwiseman. "Of course I like American better, but I don't see any sense in making fun of French the way Fizzledinkie does. It's got some queer things about it like calling a cat a chat, and a man a homm, and a lady a femm, and a dog a chi-enn, but in the main it's a pretty good language as far as I have got in it. There are one or two things in French that I haven't learned to say yet, like 'who left my umbrella out in the rain,' and 'has James currycombed the saddle-horse with the black spot on his eye and a bob-tail this morning,' and 'was that the plumber or the piano tuner I saw coming out of the house of your uncle's brother-in-law yesterday afternoon,' but now that I'm pretty familiar with it I'm glad I learned it. It is disappointing in some ways, I admit. I've been through French in Five Lessons four times now, and I haven't found any conversation in it about Kitchen-Stoves, which is going to be very difficult for me when I get to Paris and try to explain to people there how fine my kitchen-stove is. I'm fond of that old stove, and when these furriners begin to talk to me about the grandness of their country, I like to hit back with a few remarks about my stove, and I don't just see how I'm going to do it."

"What's sky-scraper in French?" demanded Whistlebinkie suddenly.

"They don't have sky-scrapers 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-glass.

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 tasse. 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."

"Why he's dead," said Mollie.

"What?" cried the Unwiseman. "Umpire Napoleon dead? Why – when did that happen? I didn't see anything about it in the newspapers."

"He died a long time ago," answered Mollie. "Before I was born, I guess."

"Well I never!" ejaculated the Unwiseman, his face clouding over. "That book I read on the History of France didn't say anything about his being dead – that is, not as far as I got in it. Last time I heard of him he was starting out for Russia to give the Czar a licking. I supposed he thought it was a good time to do it after the Japs had started the ball a-rolling. Are you sure about that?"

"Pretty sure," said Mollie. "I don't know very much about French history, but I'm almost certain he's dead."

"I'm going down stairs to ask at the office," said the Unwiseman. "They'll probably know all about it."

So the little old gentleman pattered down the hall to the elevator and went to the office to inquire as to the fate of the Emperor Napoleon. In five minutes he was back again.

"Say, Mollie," he whispered through the key-hole. "I wish you'd ask your father about the Umpire. I can't seem to find out anything about him."

"Don't they know at the office?" asked Mollie.

"Oh I guess they know all right," said the Unwiseman, "but there's a hitch somewhere in my getting the information. Far as I can find out these people over here don't understand their own language. I asked 'em in French, like this: 'Mounseer le Umpire, est il mort?' And they told me he was no more. Now whether no more means that he is not mort, or is mort, depends on what language the man who told me was speaking. If he was speaking French he's not dead. If he was speaking English he is dead, and there you are. It's awfully mixed up."

"I-guess-seez-ded-orright," whistled Whistlebinkie. "He was dead last time I heard of him, and I guess when they're dead once there dead for good."

"Well you never can tell," said the Unwiseman. "He was a very great man, the Umpire Napoleon was, and they might have only thought he was dead while he was playing foxy to see what the newspapers would say about him."

So Mollie asked her father and to the intense regret of everybody it turned out that the great Emperor had been dead for a long time.

"It's a very great disappointment to me," sighed the Unwiseman, when Mollie conveyed the sad news to him. "The minute I knew we were coming to France I began to read up about the country, and Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the things I came all the way over to see. Are the Boys de Bologna dead too?"

"I never heard of them," said Mollie.

"I feel particularly upset about the Umpire," continued the Unwiseman, "because I sat up almost all last night getting up some polite conversation to be held with him this morning. I found just the thing for it in my book."

"Howdit-go?" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Like this," said the Unwiseman. "I was going to begin with:

"'Shall you buy a horse?'

"And the Umpire was to say:

"'I should like to buy a horse from you.'

"And then we were to continue with:

"'I have no horse but I will sell you my dog.'

'You are wrong; dogs are such faithful creatures.'

'But my wife prefers cats – '"

"Pooh!" cried Whistlebinkie. "You haven't got any wife."

"Well, what of it?" retorted the Unwiseman. "The Umpire wouldn't know that, and besides she would prefer cats if I had one. You should not interrupt conversation when other people are talking, Whistlebinkie, especially when it's polite conversation."

"Orright-I-pol-gize," whistled Whistlebinkie. "Go on with the rest of it."

"I was then going to say: " continued the Unwiseman,

"'Will you go out this afternoon?'

'I should like to go out this afternoon.'

'Should you remain here if your mother were here?'

'Yes I should remain here even if my aunt were here.'

'Had you remained here I should not have gone out.'

'I shall have finished when you come.'

'As soon as you have received your money come to see me.'

'I do not know yet whether we shall leave tomorrow.'

'I should have been afraid had you not been with me.'

'So long.'

'To the river.'"

"To the river?" asked Whistlebinkie. "What does that mean?"

"It is French for, 'I hope we shall meet again.' Au river is the polite way of saying, 'good-bye for a little while.' And to think that after having sat up until five o'clock this morning learning all that by heart I should find that the man I was going to say it to has been dead for – how many years, Mollie?"

"Oh nearly a hundred years," said the little girl.

"No wonder it wasn't in the papers before I left home," said the Unwiseman. "Oh well, never mind – ."

"Perhaps you can swing that talk around so as to fit some French Robert," suggested Whistlebinkie.

"The Police are not Roberts over here," said the Unwiseman. "In France they are Johns – John Darms is what they call the pleece in this country, and I never should think of addressing a conversation designed for an Umpire to the plebean ear of a mere John."

"Well I think it was pretty poor conversation," said Whistlebinkie. "And I guess it's lucky for you the Umpire is dead. All that stuff didn't mean anything."

"It doesn't seem to mean much in English," said the Unwiseman, "but it must mean something in French, because if it didn't the man who wrote French in Five Lessons wouldn't have considered it important enough to print. Just because you don't like a thing, or don't happen to understand it, isn't any reason for believing that the Umpire would not find it extremely interesting. I shan't waste it on a John anyhow."

An hour or two later when Mollie had breakfasted the Unwiseman presented himself again.

"I'm very much afraid I'm not going to like this place any better than I did London," he said. "The English people, even if they do drop their aitches all over everywhere, understand their own language, which is more than these Frenchmen do. I have tried my French on half a dozen of them and there wasn't one of 'em that looked as if he knew what I was talking about."

"What did you say to them?" asked Mollie.

"Well I went up to a cabman and remarked, just as the book put it, 'how is the sister of your mother's uncle,' and he acted as if I'd hit him with a brick," said the Unwiseman. "Then I stopped a bright looking boy out on the rue and said to him, 'have you seen the ormolu clock of your sister's music teacher,' to which he should have replied, 'no I have not seen the ormolu clock of my sister's music teacher, but the candle-stick of the wife of the butcher of my cousin's niece is on the mantel-piece,' but all he did was to stick out his tongue at me and laugh."

"You ought to have spoken to one of the John Darms," laughed Whistlebinkie.

"I did," said the Unwiseman. "I stopped one outside the door and asked him, 'is your grandfather still alive?' The book says the answer to that is 'yes, and my grandmother also,' whereupon I should ask, 'how many grandchildren has your grandfather?' But I didn't get beyond the first question. Instead of telling me that his grandfather was living, and his grandmother also, he said something about Ally Voozon, a person of whom I never heard and who is not mentioned in the book at all. I wish I was back somewhere where they speak a language somebody can understand."

"Have you had your breakfast?" asked Mollie.

A deep frown came upon the face of the Unwiseman.

"No – " he answered shortly. "I – er – I went to get some but they tried to cheat me," he added. "There was a sign in a window announcing French Tabble d'hotes. I thought it was some new kind of a breakfast food like cracked wheat, or oat-meal flakes, so I stopped in and asked for a small box of it, and they tried to make me believe it was a meal of four or five courses, with soup and fish and a lot of other things thrown in, that had to be eaten on the premises. I wished for once that I knew some French conversation that wasn't polite to tell 'em what I thought of 'em. I can imagine a lot of queer things, but when everybody tells me that oats are soup and fish and olives and ice-cream and several other things to boot, even in French, why I just don't believe it, that's all. What's more I can prove that oats are oats over here because I saw a cab-horse eating some. I