"My!" said Whistlebinkie, blowing the snow out of his whistle. "Wasn't that fine! I could do that all day."
"You could if the hill was long enough," said Mollie, sagely. "But come, we must go home now." And home they went.
In the forty-eight or more hours that passed before Christmas morning came, Mollie often wondered at the business venture of the Unwiseman. What it could be she could not guess. The hundred pairs of stockings mystified her exceedingly, and so, when Christmas morning finally dawned, the first thing she and Whistlebinkie did was to post off at full speed to the house of the Unwiseman.
"I wonder where his home is now?" said Whistlebinkie, as they walked along.
"I haven't the slightest idea," said Mollie; "but it's had a way of turning up where we least expected it in the past, so maybe we'll find it in the same way now."
Mollie was right, for hardly were the words out of her mouth when directly in front of her she saw what was unmistakably the house of the Unwiseman, only fastened to the chimney was a huge sign, which had not been there the last time she and Whistlebinkie had visited the Unwiseman.
"What is that he's got on his chimmilly?" said Whistlebinkie, who did not know how to spell, and who always pronounced words as he thought they were spelled.
"It's a sign – sure as you live," said Mollie.
"What does it say?" Whistlebinkie asked.
"The Unwiseman's Orphan Asylum," said Mollie, reading the sign. "Notice to Santa Claus: Dear Sir: – Too Hundred Orphans is Incarcerated Here. Please leave Toys Accordingly."
"Ho!" said Whistlebinkie. "How queer."
"You don't suppose he has really gone into the Orphan Asylum business?" said Mollie.
"I dono," said Whistlebinkie. "Let's wait till we see him before we decide."
So they ran on until they got to the Unwiseman's front door, upon which they knocked as hard as they knew how.
"Who's there?" came a reply in a mournful voice, from within.
"It's us," said Mollie.
"Who is Uss?" said the voice. "I know several Usses. Are you George W. Uss, the trolley-car conductor, or William Peters Uss, the poet? If you are the poet, I don't want to see you. I don't care for any poetry to-day. If you are the conductor, I've paid my fare."
"It's Mollie and Whistlebinkie," said Mollie.
"Oh – well, that's different. Come in and see your poor ruined old friend, who's got to go back to apples, whether he likes them or not," said the voice.
Mollie opened the door and walked in, Whistlebinkie following close behind her – and what a sight it was that met their gaze! There in the middle of the floor sat the Unwiseman, the perfect picture of despair. Scattered about the room were hundreds of broken toys, and swinging from the mantel-piece were two hundred stockings.
"Hello!" said the Unwiseman. "Merry Christmas. I'm ruined; but what of that? You aren't."
"But how are you ruined?" asked Mollie.
"My business has failed – it didn't work," groaned the Unwiseman. "It was the toy business I was going into, and as I had no money to buy the toys with I borrowed a hundred pairs of stockings and hung 'em up. Then I put out that notice for Santa Claus, telling him that this was an Orphan Asylum."
"Yes," said Mollie, "I know. But it wasn't the truth, was it?"
"Of course it was," said the Unwiseman. "I'm an orphan. Very few men of my age are not, and this is my asylum."
"Yes; but you said there were two hundred in here," said Mollie. "I saw your sign."
"Well there are," said the Unwiseman. "The piano hasn't any father or mother, neither have the chairs, or the hundred and ninety-eight other orphans in this house. It was all true."
"Well, anyhow," said Whistlebinkie, "you've got heaps of things. Every stocking seems to have been filled."
"True," said the Unwiseman. "But almost entirely with old, cast-off toys. I think it's pretty mean that boys and girls who are not orphans should get all the new toys and that those who are orphans get the broken ones."
Which strikes me as a very wise remark for an unwise man to make.
"Anyhow," continued the Unwiseman, "I'm ruined. I can't sell these toys, and so I've got to go back to apples."
And here he fell to weeping so violently that Mollie and Whistlebinkie stole softly out and went home; but on the way Mollie whispered to Whistlebinkie:
"I'm rather sorry for him; but, after all, it was his own fault. He really did try to deceive Santa Claus."
"Yes," said Whistlebinkie. "That's so. But he was right about the meanness of giving only old toys to orphans."
"Yes, he was," said Mollie.
"Yesindeedy!" whistled Whistlebinkie through his hat, gleefully, for he was very happy, as indeed I should be, if I were an old toy, to hear my little master or mistress say it was mean to give me away.
"By the way," said Mollie. "He seems to have got over his anger with us. I was afraid he wouldn't ever speak to us again after his call."
"So was I," said Whistlebinkie. "And I asked him if he wasn't mad at us any more, and he said, yes he was, but he'd forgiven us for our Christmas present."
VII
The Unwiseman's New Year's Resolutions
In which the Unwiseman gives up some very Distinguished Words
During the days immediately following Christmas Mollie was so absorbed in the beautiful things the season of peace on earth and good will to men had brought to her that she not only forgot the Unwiseman and his woe over the failure of his business plans, but even her poor little friend Whistlebinkie was allowed to lie undisturbed and unthought of. Several times when she had come near his side Whistlebinkie had tried to whistle something in her ear, but unsuccessfully. Either the something he wanted to whistle wouldn't come, or else if it did Mollie failed to hear it, and Whistlebinkie was very unhappy in consequence.
"That's always the way," he sobbed to Flaxilocks who shared his exile with him and who sat on the toy shelf gazing jealously out of her great, deep blue eyes at the magnificent new wax doll that Mollie had received from her grandmother; "don't make any difference how fine a toy may be, he may be made of the best of rubber, and have a whistle that isn't equalled by any locomotive whistle in the world for sweetness, the time comes when his master or mistress grows tired of him and lavishes all her affection on another toy because the other toy happens to be new. What on earth she can see in that real dog to admire I cannot discern. He can't bark half so well as I can whistle, and I am in mortal terror of him all the time, he eyes me so hungrily – but now he is her favorite. Everywhere Mollie goes Gyp goes, and I'm real mad."
"Oh, never mind," said Flaxilocks; "she'll get tired of him in a week or two and then she'll take us up again, just as if we were new. I've been around other Christmases and I know how things work. It'll be all right in a little while – that is, it will be for you. I don't know how it is going to turn out with me. That new doll, while I can see many defects in her, which you can't, I can't deny is a beauty, and her earrings are much handsomer than mine. It may be that I must become second to her; but you, you needn't play second fiddle to any one, for there isn't another rubber doll with a whistle in his hat in the house to rival you."
"Well, I wish I could be sure of that," said Whistlebinkie, mournfully, "I can see very well how Mollie can love you as well as she loves me – but that real dog, bah! He can't even whistle, and he's awfully destructive. Only last night he chewed up the calico cat, and actually, Mollie laughed. Do you suppose she would laugh if he chewed me up?"
"He couldn't chew you up," said Flaxilocks. "You are rubber." Whistlebinkie was about to reply to this when his fears were set at rest and Flaxilocks was comforted, for Mollie with her new dog and wax doll came up to where they were sitting and introduced her new pets to the old ones.
"I want you four to know each other," she said. "We'll have lots of fun together this year," and then before they knew it Flaxilocks and the new doll were fast friends, and as for Whistlebinkie and Gyp, they became almost inseparable. Gyp barked and Whistlebinkie whistled, while the dolls sat holding each other's hands, looking if anything quite as happy as Mollie herself.
"What do you all say to making a call on the Unwiseman?" Mollie said, after a few minutes. "We ought to go wish him a Happy New Year."
"Simply elegant," whistled Whistlebinkie, and Gyp and the dolls said he was right, and so they all started off together.
"Where does he live?" asked the new doll.
"All around," said Flaxilocks. "He has a house that moves about. One day it is in one place and another in another."
"But how do you find it?" queried the new doll.
"You don't have to," whistled Whistlebinkie. "You just walk on until you run against it," – and just as he spoke, as if to prove his words, bang! he ran right into the gate. "Here it is now," he added.
"He evidently doesn't want to see anybody," said Mollie, noticing a basket hanging from the front door-knob. "He's put out a basket for cards. Dear me! I wish he'd see us."
"Maybe he will," said Whistlebinkie. "I'll ring the bell. Hello!" he added sharply, as he looked into the basket; "that's queer. It's chock-up full of cards now – somebody must have called."
"It has a placard over it," said Flaxilocks.
"So it has," said Mollie, a broad smile brightening her face; "and it says, 'Take one' on it. What does he mean?"
"That looks like your card on top," said Flaxilocks.
"Why it is my card," cried Mollie, "and here is Whistlebinkie's card too. We haven't been here."
"Of course you haven't," said a voice from behind the door. "But you are here now. I knew you were coming and I was afraid you'd forget to bring your cards with you, so I took some of your old ones that you had left here before and put 'em out there where you could get them. Ring the bell, and I'll let you in."
Whistlebinkie rang the bell as instructed, and the door was immediately opened, and there stood the Unwiseman waiting to welcome them.
"Why, dear me! What a delicious surprise," he said. "Walk right in. I had no idea you were coming."
"We came to wish you a Happy New Year," said Mollie.
"That's very kind of you," said the Unwiseman, "very kind, indeed. I was thinking of you this morning when I was making my good resolutions for the New Year. I was wondering whether I ought to give you up with other good things, and I finally decided not to. One must have some comfort."
"Then you have made some good resolutions, have you?" said Mollie.
"Millions of 'em," said the Unwiseman; "and I'm going to make millions more. One of 'em is that I won't catch cold during the coming year. That's one of the best resolutions a man of my age can make. Colds are very bad things, and it costs so much to be rid of them. Why, I had one last winter and I had to burn three cords of wood to get rid of it."
"Do you cure a cold with wood?" asked Flaxilocks.
"Why not?" returned the Unwiseman. "A roaring hot fire is the best cure for cold I know. What do you do when you have a cold, sit on the ice-box?"
"No, I take medicine," said Mollie. "Pills and things."
"I don't like pills," said the Unwiseman. "They don't burn well. I bought some quinine pills to cure my cold three winters ago, and they just sizzled a minute when I lit them and went out." This pleased Gyp so much that he sprang upon the piano and wagged his tail on C sharp until Mollie made him stop.
"Another resolution I made," continued the Unwiseman, "was to open that piano. That's why it's open now. I've always kept it locked before, but now it is going to be open all the time. That'll give the music a chance to get out; and it's a good thing for pianos to get a little fresh air once in a while. It's the stale airs in that piano – airs like Way Down Upon the Suwanee River, and Annie McGinty, and tunes like that that have made me dislike it."
"Queerest man I ever saw!" whispered the new doll to Flaxilocks.
"But I didn't stop there," said the Unwiseman. "I made up my mind that I wouldn't grow any older this year. I'm going to stay seven hundred, just as I am now, always. Seven hundred is old enough for anybody, and I'm not going to be greedy about my years when I have enough. Let somebody else have the years, say I."
"Very wise and very generous," said Mollie; "but I don't see just how you are going to manage it."
"Me neither," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I do'see how you're going to do that."
"Simple enough," said the Unwiseman. "I've stopped the clock."
Gyp turned his head to one side as the Unwiseman spoke and looked at him earnestly for a few seconds, and then, as if overcome with mirth at the idea, he rushed out of the door and chased his tail around the house three times.
"What an extraordinary animal that is," said the Unwiseman. "He must be very young."
"He is," said Mollie. "He is nothing but a puppy."
"Well, it seems to me he wastes a good deal of strength," said the Unwiseman. "Why, if I should run around the house that way three times I'd be so tired I'd have to hire a man to help me rest."
"Are you really seven hundred years old?" queried the new doll, who, I think, would have followed Gyp's example and run around the house herself if she had thought it was dignified and was not afraid of spoiling her new three-button shoes.
"I don't know for sure," said the Unwiseman, "but I fancy I must be. I know I'm over sixty because I was born seventy-three years ago. Seven hundred is over sixty, and so for the sake of round figures I have selected that age. It's rather a wonderful age, don't you think so?"
"It certainly is," said the new doll.
"But then you are a wonderful man," said Mollie.
"True," said the Unwiseman, reflectively. "I am wonderful. Sometimes I spend the whole night full of wonder that I should be so wonderful. I know so much. Why, I can read French. I can't understand it, but I can read it quite as well as I can English. I can't read English very well, of course; but then I only went to school one day and that happened to be a holiday; so I didn't learn how to do anything but take a day off. But we are getting away from my resolutions. I want to tell you some more of them. I have thought it all over, and I am determined that all through the year I shall eat only three meals a day with five nibbles between times. I'm going to give up water-melons, which I never eat, and when I converse with anybody I have solemnly promised myself never to make use of such words as assafœdita, peristyle, or cosmopolis. That last resolution is a great sacrifice for me because I am very fond of long words. They sound so learned; but I shall be firm. Assafœdita, peristyle, and cosmopolis until next year dawns shall be dead to me. I may take them on again next year; but if I do, I shall drop Mulligatawney, Portuguese, and pollywog from my vocabulary. I may even go so far as to drop vocabulary, although it is a word for which I have a strong affection. I am so attached to vocabulary as a word that I find myself murmuring it to myself in the dead of night."
"What does it mean?" asked the new doll.
"Vocabulary?" cried the Unwiseman. "Vocabulary? Don't you know what a vocabulary is?"
"I know," said Whistlebinkie. "It's an animal with an hump on its back."
"Nonsense," said the Unwiseman. "A vocabulary is nothing of the sort. It's a – a sort of little bureau talkers have to keep their words in. It's a sort of word-cabinet. I haven't really got one, but that's because I don't need one. I have so few words I can carry them in my head, and if I can't, I jot them down on a piece of paper. It's a splendid idea, that. It's helped me lots of times in conversation. I'm as fond of the word microcosm as I am of vocabulary, too, but I never can remember it, so I keep it on a piece of paper in my vest-pocket. Whenever I want to use it, I know just where to find it."
"And what does microcosm mean?" asked Mollie.
"I don't know," said the Unwiseman; "but few people do; and if I use it, not one person in a thousand would dare take me up, so I just sprinkle it around to suit myself."
As the Unwiseman spoke, the postman came to the door with a letter.
"Ah!" said the Unwiseman, opening it and reading it. "I am sorry to say that I must leave you now. I have an engagement with my hatter this afternoon, and if I don't go now he will be much disappointed."
"Is that letter from him?" asked Mollie.
"Oh no," said the Unwiseman, putting on his coat. "It is from myself. I thought about the engagement last night, and fearing that I might forget it I wrote a short note to myself reminding me of it. This is the note. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Mollie, and then, as the Unwiseman went off to meet his hatter, she and the others deemed it best to go home.
"But why did he say he expected you to call and then seemed surprised to see you?" asked the new doll.
"Oh – that's his way," said Mollie. "You'll get used to it in time."
But the new doll never did, for she was a proud wax-doll, and never learned to love the Unwiseman as I do for his sweet simplicity and never-ending good nature.