"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 NOZE
ONE PARE OF EARS
A 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.