see you have all your pictures with their faces turned to the wall," said Mollie, looking about the room again so as to avoid laughing in the Unwiseman's face. "What is that for?"
"That's to make them more interesting," replied the Unwiseman. "They're a very uninteresting lot of pictures, and I never could get anybody to look at 'em until I turned them hind side before, that way. Now everybody wants to see them."
Mollie rose up, and turned one of them about so that she could see it.
"It's very pretty," she said. "What is it a picture of – a meadow?"
"No. It's a picture of me," said the Unwiseman. "And it's one of the best I ever had taken."
"But I don't see you in it," said Mollie. "All I can see is a great field of grass and a big bowlder down in one corner."
"I know it," said the Unwiseman. "I'm lying on my back behind the bowlder asleep. If you could move the bowlder you could see me, but you can't. It's too heavy, and, besides, I think the paint is glued on."
"I hope you don't lie on the ground asleep very much," said Mollie, gravely, for she had taken a great liking to this strange old man who didn't know anything. "You might catch your death of cold."
"I didn't say I was lying on the ground," said the Unwiseman. "I said I was lying on my back. People ought not to catch cold lying on a nice warm back like mine."
"And do you live here all alone?" asked Mollie.
"Yes, I don't need anybody to live with. Other people know things, and it always makes them proud, and I don't like proud people."
"I hope you like me," said Mollie, softly.
"Yes, indeed, I do," cried the Unwiseman. "I like you and Whistlebinkie very much, because you don't either of you know anything either, and so, of course, you aren't stuck up like some people I meet who think just because they know the difference between a polar bear and a fog horn while I don't that they're so much better than I am. I like you, and I hope you will come and see me again."
"I will, truly," said Mollie.
"Very well – and that you may get back sooner you'd better run right home now. It is getting late, and, besides, I have an engagement."
"You?" asked Mollie. "What with?"
"Well, don't you tell anybody," said the Unwiseman; "but I'm going up to the village to the drug store. I promised to meet myself up there at six o'clock, and it's quarter past now, so I must hurry."
"But what on earth are you going to do there?" asked Mollie.
"I'm going to buy myself a beaver hat just like Whistlebinkie's," returned the Unwiseman, gleefully, "I've got to have something to keep my tablecloth in, and a beaver hat strikes me as just the thing."
Saying which the Unwiseman bowed Mollie and Whistlebinkie out, and sped off like lightning in the direction of the village drug store, but whether or not he succeeded in getting a beaver hat there I don't know, for he never told me.
III
In the House of the Unwiseman
In which Mollie Reads Some Strange Rules
A Few days later Mollie and Whistlebinkie were strolling together through the meadows when most unexpectedly they came upon the little red house of the Unwiseman.
"Why, I thought this house was under the willow tree," said Mollie.
"Sotwuz," whistled Whistlebinkie through his hat.
"What are you trying to say, Whistlebinkie?" asked Mollie.
"So – it – was," replied Whistlebinkie. "He must have moved it."
"But this isn't half as nice a place for it as the old one," said Mollie. "There isn't any shade here at all. Let's knock at the door, and see if he is at home. Maybe he will tell us why he has moved again."
Mollie tapped gently on the door, but received no response. Then she tried the knob, but the door was fastened.
"Nobody's home, I guess," she said.
"The back door is open," cried Whistlebinkie, running around to the rear of the house. "Come around this way, Mollie, and we can get in."
So around Mollie went, and sure enough there was the kitchen door standing wide open. A chicken was being grilled on the fire, and three eggs were in the pot boiling away so actively that they would undoubtedly have been broken had they not been boiling so long that they had become as hard as rocks.
"Isn't he the foolishest old man that ever was," said Mollie, as she caught sight of the chicken and the eggs. "That chicken will be burned to a crisp, and the eggs won't be fit to eat."
"I don't understand him at all," said Whistlebinkie. "Look at this notice to burglars he has pinned upon the wall."
Mollie looked and saw the following, printed in very awkward letters, hanging where Whistlebinkie had indicated:
Notiss to Burgylers.
If you have come to robb mi house you'd better save yourselfs the trouble. My silver spoons are all made of led, and my diamonds are only window glass. If you must steel something steel the boyled eggs, because I don't like boyled eggs anyhow. Also plese if you get overcome with remoss for having robbed a poor old man like me and want to give yourselfs upp to the poleese, you can ring up the poleese over the tellyfone in Miss Mollie Wisslebinkie's house up on Broadway.
P. S. If you here me coming while you are robbing me plese run, because I'm afraid of burgylers, and doo not want to mete enny.
N. G. If you can't rede my handwriting you'd better get someboddy who can to tell you what I have ritten, because it is very important. Wishing you a plesant time I am egen as I sed befour
"What nonsense," said Mollie, as she read this extraordinary production. "As if the burglars would pay any attention to a notice like that."
"Oh, they might!" said Whistlebinkie. "It might make 'em laugh so they'd have fits, and then they couldn't burgle. But what is that other placard he has pinned on the wall?"
"That," said Mollie, as she investigated the second placard, "that seems to be a lot of rules for the kitchen. He's a queer old man for placards, isn't he?"
"Indeed he is," said Whistlebinkie. "What do the rules say?"
"I'll get 'em down," said Mollie, mounting a chair and removing the second placard from the wall. Then she and Whistlebinkie read the following words:
1. No cook under two years of age unaccompanied by nurse or parent aloud in this kitching.
3. Boyled eggs must never be cooked in the frying pan, and when fried eggs are ordered the cook must remember not to scramble them. This rule is printed ahed of number too, because it is more important than it.
2. Butcher boys are warned not to sit on the ranje while the fiyer is going because all the heat in the fiyer is needed for cooking. Butcher boys who violate this rule will be charged for the cole consumed in burning them.
7. The fiyer must not be aloud to go out without some boddy with it, be cause fiyers are dangerous and might set the house on fiyer. Any cook which lets the house burn down through voilating this rule will have the value of the house subtracted from her next month's wages, with interest at forety persent from the date of the fiyer.
11. Brekfist must be reddy at all hours, and shall consist of boyled eggs or something else.
4. Wages will be pade according to work done on the following skale:
In making up bills against me cooks must add the figewers right, and substract from the whole the following charges:
13. These rules must be obayed.