Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad Part 29

"To the President?" cried Mollie.

"Yes--I want him to know I'm home in the first place, and in the second place I want to tell him that the next time he wants to collect his salary from me, I'll take it as a personal favor if he'll come himself and not send Uncle Sam Maginnis after it. I can stand a good deal for my country's sake but when a Custom House inspector prys into my private affairs and then calls them junk just because the President needs a four and a quarter thousandth of a cent, it makes me very, very angry. It's been as much as I could do to keep from saying 'Thunder' ever since I landed, and that ain't the way an American citizen ought to feel when he comes back to his own beautiful land again after three months' absence.

It's like celebrating a wanderer's return by hitting him in the face with a boot-jack, and I don't like it."

The window was opened and with much deliberation the Unwiseman despatched his message to the President, announcing his return and protesting against the tyrannous behavior of Mr. Maginnis, the Custom House Inspector, after which the little party continued on their way until they reached their native town. Here they separated, Mollie and Whistlebinkie going to their home and the Unwiseman to the queer little house that he had left in charge of the burglar at the beginning of the summer.

"If I ever go abroad again," said the Unwiseman at parting, "which I never ain't going to do, I'll bring a big Bengal tiger back in my bag that ain't been fed for seven weeks, and then we'll have some fun when Maginnis opens the bag!"

XV.

HOME, SWEET HOME

"Hurry up and finish your breakfast, Whistlebinkie," said Mollie the next morning after their return from abroad. "I want to run around to the Unwiseman's House and see if everything is all right. I'm just crazy to know how the burglar left the house."

"I-mall-ready," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I-yain't-very-ungry."

"Lost your appet.i.te?" asked Mollie eyeing him anxiously, for she was a motherly little girl and took excellent care of all her playthings.

"Yep," said Whistlebinkie. "I always do lose my appet.i.te after eating three plates of oat-meal, four chops, five rolls, six buckwheat cakes and a couple of bananas."

"Mercy! How do you hold it all, Whistlebinkie?" said Mollie.

"Oh--I'm made o'rubber and my stummick is very 'lastic," explained Whistlebinkie.

So hand in hand the little couple made off down the road to the pleasant spot where the Unwiseman's house stood, and there in the front yard was the old gentleman himself talking to his beloved boulder, and patting it gently as he did so.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I'M NEVER GOING TO LEAVE YOU AGAIN, BOLDY," HE WAS SAYING]

"I'm never going to leave you again, Boldy," he was saying to the rock as Mollie and Whistlebinkie came up. "It is true that the Rock of Gibraltar is bigger and broader and more terrible to look at than you are but when it comes right down to business it isn't any harder or to my eyes any prettier. You are still my favorite rock, Boldy dear, so you needn't be jealous." And the old gentleman bent over and kissed the boulder softly.

"Good morning," said Mollie, leaning over the fence. "Whistlebinkie and I have come down to see if everything is all right. I hope the kitchen-stove is well?"

"Well the house is here, and all the bric-a-brac, and the leak has grown a bit upon the ceiling, and the kitchen-stove is all right thank you, but I'm afraid that old burgular has run off with my umbrella," said the Unwiseman. "I can't find a trace of it anywhere."

"You don't really think he has stolen it do you?" asked Mollie.

"I don't know what to think," said the Unwiseman, shaking his head gravely. "He had first cla.s.s references, that burgular had, and claimed to have done all the burguling for the very nicest people in the country for the last two years, but these are the facts. He's gone and the umbrella's gone too. I suppose in the burgular's trade like in everything else you some times run across one who isn't as honest as he ought to be. Occasionally you'll find a burgular who'll take things that don't belong to him and it may be that this fellow that took my house was one of that kind--but you never can tell. It isn't fair to judge a man by disappearances, and it is just possible that the umbrella got away from him in a heavy storm. It was a skittish sort of a creature anyhow and sometimes I've had all I could do in windy weather to keep it from running away myself. What do you think of my sign?"

"I don't see any sign," said Mollie, looking all around in search of the object. "Where is it?"

"O I forgot," laughed the old gentleman gaily. "It's around on the other side of the house--come on around and see it."

The callers walked quickly around to the rear of the Unwiseman's house, and there, hanging over the kitchen door, was a long piece of board upon which the Unwiseman had painted in very crooked black letters the following words:

THE BRITISH MUSEUM JUNIOR Admishun ten cents. Exit fifteen cents.

Burgulars one umbrella.

THE FINEST COLECTION OF ALPS AND SOFORTHS ON EARTH.

CHILDREN AND RUBER DOLLS FREE ON SATIDYS.

"Dear me--how interesting," said Mollie, as she read this remarkable legend, "but--what does it mean?"

"It means that I've started a British Museum over here," said the Unwiseman, "only mine is going to be useful, instead of merely ornamental like that one over in London. For twenty-five cents a man can get a whole European trip in my Museum without getting on board of a steamer. I only charge ten cents to come in so as to get people to come, and I charge fifteen cents to get out so as to make 'em stay until they have seen all there is to be seen. People get awfully tired travelling abroad, I find, and if you make it too easy for them to run back home they'll go without finishing their trip. I charge burgulars one umbrella to get in so that if my burgular comes back he'll have to make good my loss, or stay out."

"Why do you let children and rubber dolls in free?" asked Mollie, reading the sign over a second time.

"I wrote that rule to cover you and old Squizzled.i.n.kie here," said the old gentleman, with a kindly smile at his little guests. "Although it really wasn't necessary because I don't charge any admission to people who come in the front door and you could always come in that way. That's the entrance to my home. The back-door I charge for because it's the entrance to my museum, don't you see?"

"Clear as a blue china alley," said Whistlebinkie.

"Come in and see the exhibit," said the Unwiseman proudly.

And then as Mollie and Whistlebinkie entered the house their eyes fell upon what was indeed the most marvellous collection of interesting objects they had ever seen. All about the parlor were ranged row upon row of bottles, large and small, each bearing a label describing its contents, with here and there mysterious boxes, and broken tumblers and all sorts of other odd things that the Unwiseman had brought home in his carpet-bag.

"Bottle number one," said he, pointing to the object with a cane, "is filled with Atlantic Ocean--real genuine briny deep--bottled it myself and so I know there's nothing bogus about it. Number two which looks empty, but really ain't, is full of air from the coast of Ireland, caught three miles out from Queenstown by yours trooly, Mr. Me. Number three, full of dust and small pebbles, is genuine British soil gathered in London the day they put me out of the Museum. 'Tain't much to look at, is it?" he added.

"Nothin' extra," said Whistlebinkie, inspecting it with a critical air after the manner of one who was an expert in soils.

"Not compared to American soil anyhow," said the Unwiseman. "This hard cake in the tin box is a 'm.u.f.fin by Special Appointment to the King,'"

he went on with a broad grin. "I went in and bought one after we had our rumpus in the bake-shop, just for the purpose of bringing it over here and showing the American people how vain and empty roilty has become. It is not a n.o.ble looking object to my eyes."

"Mine neither," whistled Whistlebinkie. "It looks rather stale."

"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "And that's the only roil thing about it.

Pa.s.sing along rapidly we come soon to a bottleful of the British Channel," he resumed. "In order to get the full effect of that very conceited body of water you want to shake it violently. That gives you some idea of how the water works. It's tame enough now that I've got it bottled but in its native lair it is fierce. You will see the instructions on the bottle."

Sure enough the bottle was labeled as the Unwiseman said with full instructions as to how it must be used.

"Shake for fifteen minutes until it is all roiled up and swells around inside the bottle like a tidal wave," the instructions read. "You will then get a small idea of how this disagreeable body of water behaves itself in the presence of trusting strangers."

"Here is my bottle of French soil," said the Unwiseman, pa.s.sing on to the next object. "It doesn't look very different from English soil but it's French all right, as you would see for yourself if it tried to talk. I scooped it up myself in Paris. There's the book--French in Five Lessons--too. That I call 'The French Language,' which shows people who visit this museum what a funny tongue it is. That pill box full of sand is a part of the Swiss frontier and the small piece of gravel next to it is a piece of an Alp chipped off Mount Blanc by myself, so that I know it is genuine. It will give the man who has never visited Swaz--well--that country, a small idea of what an Alp looks like and will correct the notion in some people's minds that an Alp is a wild animal with a long hairy tail and the manners of a lion. The next two bottles contain all that is left of a snow-ball I gathered in at Chamouny, and a chip of the Mer de Glace glazier. They've both melted since I bottled them, but I'll have them frozen up again all right when winter comes, so there's no harm done."

"What's this piece of broken china on the table?" asked Mollie.

"That is a fragment of a Parisian b.u.t.ter saucer," said the Unwiseman.

"One of the waiters fell down stairs with somebody's breakfast at our hotel in Paris one morning while we were there," he explained, "and I rescued that from the debris. It is a perfect specimen of a broken French b.u.t.ter dish."

"I don't think it's very interesting," said Mollie.

"Well to tell you the truth, I don't either, but you've got to remember, my dear, that this is a British Museum and the one over in London is chuck full of broken china, old b.u.t.ter plates and coffee cups from all over everywhere, and I don't want people who care for that sort of thing to be disappointed with my museum when they come here. Take that plaster statue of Cupid that I bought in Venice--I only got that to please people who care for statuary."

"Where is it?" asked Mollie, searching the room with her eye for the Cupid.

"I've spread it out through the Museum so as to make it look more like a collection," said the Unwiseman. "I got a tack-hammer as soon as I got home last night and fixed it up. There's an arm over on the mantel-piece. His chest and left leg are there on top of the piano, while his other arm with his left ear and right leg are in the kitchen.

I haven't found places for his stummick and what's left of his head yet, but I will before the crowd begins to arrive."