The Unwiseman's face wore a very troubled look as the little party of
travellers landed at Liverpool. He had doffed his sailor's costume and
now appeared in his regular frock coat and old fashioned beaver hat, and
carried an ancient carpet-bag in his hand, presenting to Mollie and
Whistlebinkie a more familiar appearance than while in his sea-faring
clothes, but he was evidently very much worried about something.
"Cheer up," whistled Whistlebinkie noting his careworn expression. "You
look as if you were down to your last cream-cake. Wass-er-matter?"
"I think they've fooled us," replied the Unwiseman with a doubtful shake
of his gray head. "This don't look like England to me, and I've been
wondering if that ship mightn't be a pirate ship after all that's
carried us all off to some strange place with the idea of thus getting
rid of us, so that the Captain might go home and steal our
kitchen-stoves and other voluble things."
"Pooh!" ejaculated Whistlebinkie. "What makes you thinkit-taint
England?"
"It's too big in the first place," replied the Unwiseman, "and in the
second it ain't the right color. Just look at this map and you'll see."
Here Mr. Me took a map of the world out of his pocket and spread it out
before Whistlebinkie.
"See that?" he said pointing to England in one corner. "I've measured it
off with a tape measure and it's only four inches long and about an inch
and a half wide. This place we're in now is more'n five miles long and,
as far as I can see two or three miles across. And look at the color on
the map."
"Tspink," said Whistlebinkie.
"I don't know what you mean by tspink," said the Unwiseman, "but----"
"It's-pink," explained Whistlebinkie.
"Exactly," said the Unwiseman. "That's just what it is, but that ain't
the color of this place. Seems to me this place is a sort of dull yellow
dusty brown. And besides I don't see any houses on the map and this
place is just chock-full of them."
"O well, I guess it's all right," said Whistlebinkie. "Maybe when we get
further in we'll find it grows pinker. Cities ain't never the same color
as the country you know."
"Possibly," said the Unwiseman, "but even then that wouldn't account for
the difference in size. Why should the map say it's four inches by an
inch and a half, when anybody can see that this place is five miles by
three just by looking at it?"
"I guess-smaybe it's grown some since that map was made," suggested
Whistlebinkie. "Being surrounded by water you'd think it would grow."
Just then a British policeman walked along the landing stage and
Whistlebinkie added, "There's a p'liceman. You might speak to him about
it."
"Good idea," said the Unwiseman. "I'll do it." And he walked up to the
officer.
"Good morning, Robert," said he. "You'll pardon my curiosity, but is
this England?"
"Yessir," replied the officer politely. "You are on British soil, sir."
"H'm! British, eh?" observed the Unwiseman. "Just what _is_ that?
French for English, I suppose."
"This is Great Britain, sir," explained the officer with a smile.
"Hingland is a part of Great Britain."
"Hingland?" asked the Unwiseman with a frown.
"Yessir--this is Hingland, sir," replied the policeman, as he turned on
his heel and wandered on down the stage leaving the Unwiseman more
perplexed than when he had asked the question.
"It looks queerer than ever," said the Unwiseman when he had returned to
Whistlebinkie. "These people don't seem to have agreed on the name of
this place, which I consider to be a very suspicious circumstance. That
policeman said first it was England, then he said it was Great Britain,
and then he changed it to Hingland, while Mollie's father says it's
Liverpool. It's mighty strange, and I wish I was well out of it."
"Why did you call the p'liceman Robert, Mr. Me?" asked Whistlebinkie,
who somehow or other did not seem to share the old gentleman's fears.
"O I read somewhere that the English policemen were all Bobbies," the
Unwiseman replied. "But I didn't feel that I'd ought to be so familiar
as to call him that until I'd got to know him better, so I just called
him Robert."
Later on Mollie explained the situation to the old fellow.
"Liverpool," she said, "is a part of England and England is a part of
Great Britain, just as Binghamton is a part of New York and New York is
a part of the United States of America."
"Ah--that's it, eh?" he answered. "And how about Hingland?"
"That is the way some of the English people talk," explained Mollie. "A
great many of them drop their H's," she added.
"Aha!" said the Unwiseman, nodding his head. "I see. And the police go
around after them picking them up, eh?"
"I guess that's it," said Mollie.
"Because if they didn't," continued the Unwiseman, "the streets and
gutters would be just over-run with 'em. If 20,000,000 people dropped
twenty-five H's apiece every day that would be 500,000,000 H's lyin'
around. I don't believe you could drive a locomotive through that
many--Mussy Me! It must keep the police busy pickin' 'em up."
"Perfly-awful!" whistled Whistlebinkie.
"I'm going to write a letter to the King about it," said the Unwiseman,
"and send him a lot of rules like I have around my house to keep people
from being so careless."
"That's a splendid idea," cried Mollie, overjoyed at the notion. "What
will you say?"
"H'm!" said the Unwiseman. "Let me see--I guess I'd write like this:"
and the strange old man sat down on a trunk and dashed off the following
letter to King Edward.