Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad Part 9

To jolly, to jolly, to jolly, to jolly, to jolly old London-town."

"Hi there, Mollie--press the latch on this carpet-bag!" the voice continued.

"Where are you?" cried Mollie, gazing excitedly about her.

"In here," came the voice from the cavernous depths of the carpet-bag.

"In the bag," gasped Mollie, breathless with surprise.

"_The_ same--let me out," replied the Unwiseman.

And sure enough, when Mollie and Whistlebinkie with a mad rush sped to the carpet-bag and pressed on the sliding lock, the bag flew open and Mr. Me himself hopped smilingly up out of its wide-stretched jaws.

V.

A CALL ON THE KING

"Mercy!" cried Mollie as the Unwiseman stepped out of the carpet-bag, and began limbering up his stiffened legs by pirouetting about the room.

"Aren't you nearly stufficated to death?"

"No indeed," said the Unwiseman. "Why should I be?"

"Well _I_ should think the inside of a carpet-bag would be pretty smothery," observed Mollie.

"Perhaps it would be," agreed the Unwiseman, "if I hadn't taken mighty good care that it shouldn't be. You see I brought that life-preserver along, and every time I needed a bite of fresh air, I'd unscrew the tin cap and get it. I pumped it full of fine salt air the day we left Ireland for just that purpose."

"What a splendid idea!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mollie full of admiration for the Unwiseman's ingenuity.

"Yes I think it's pretty good," said the Unwiseman, "and when I get back home I'm going to invent it and make a large fortune out of it. Of course there ain't many people nowadays, especially among the rich, who travel in carpet-bags the way I do, or get themselves checked through from New York to Chicago in trunks, but there are a lot of 'em who are always complaining about the lack of fresh air in railroad trains especially when they're going through tunnels, so I'm going to patent a little pocket fresh air case that they can carry about with them and use when needed. It is to be made of rubber like a hot-water bag, and all you've got to do before starting off on a long journey is to take your bicycle pump, pump the fresh-air bag full of the best air you can find on the place and set off on your trip. Then when the cars get snuffy, just unscrew the cap and take a sniff."

"My goodness!" cried Mollie. "You ought to make a million dollars out of that."

"Million?" retorted the Unwiseman. "Well I should say so. Why there are 80,000,000 people in America and if I sold one of those fresh-air bags a year to only 79,000,000 of 'em at two dollars apiece for ten years you see where I'd come out. They'd call me the Fresh Air King and print my picture in the newspapers."

"You couldn't lend me two dollars now, could you?" asked Whistlebinkie facetiously.

"Yes I _could_," said the Unwiseman with a frown, "but I won't--but you can go out on the street and breathe two dollars worth of fresh air any time you want to and have it charged to my account."

Mollie laughed merrily at the Unwiseman's retort, and Whistlebinkie for the time being had nothing to say, or whistle either for that matter.

"You missed a lot of interesting scenery on the way up, Mr. Me," said Mollie.

"No I didn't," said the Unwiseman. "I heard it all as it went by, and that's good enough for me. I'd just as lief hear a thing as see it any day. I saw some music once and it wasn't half as pretty to look at as it was when I heard it, and it's the same way about scenery if you only get your mind fixed up so that you can enjoy it that way. Somehow or other it didn't sound so very different from the scenery I've heard at home, and that's one thing that made me like it. I'm very fond of sitting quietly in my little room at home and listening to the landscape when the moon is up and the stars are out, and no end of times as we rattled along from Liverpool to London it sounded just like things do over in America, especially when we came to the switches at the railroad conjunctions. Don't they rattle beautifully!"

"They certainly do!" said Whistlebinkie, prompted largely by a desire to get back into the good graces of the Unwiseman. "I love it when we b.u.mp over them so hard they make-smee-wissle."

"You're all right when you whistle, Fizzled.i.n.kie," smiled the Unwiseman.

"It's only when you try to talk that you are not all that you should be.

Woyds and you get sort of tangled up and I haven't got time to ravel you out. But I say, Mollie, we're really in London are we?"

"Yes," said Mollie. "This is it."

"Well I guess I'll go out and see what there is about it that makes people want to come here," said the Unwiseman. "I've got a list of things I want to see, and the sooner I get to work the sooner I'll see 'em. First thing I want to get a sight of is a real London fog. Then of course I want to go down to the Aquarium and see the Prince of Whales, and call on the King and Queen, and meet a few Dukes, and Earls and things like that. Then there's the British Museum. I'm told there is a lot of very interesting things down there including some Egyptian mummies that are pa.s.sing their declining years there. I've never talked to a mummy in my life and I'd rather like to meet a few of 'em. I wonder if d.i.c.k Whittington's cat is still living."

"O I don't believe so," said Mollie. "He must have died long years ago."

"The first time and maybe the second or third or even the fourth time,"

said the Unwiseman. "But cats have nine lives and if he lived fifty years for each of them that would be--let's see, four times nine is eighteen, three times two is ten, carry four and----"

"It would be 450 years," laughed Mollie.

"Pretty old cat," said Whistlebinkie.

"Well there's no harm in asking anyhow, and if he is alive I'm going to see him, and if he isn't the chances are they've had him stuffed and a stuffed cat is better to look at than no cat at all," said the Unwiseman, brus.h.i.+ng off his hat preparatory to going out. "Come on, Mollie--are you ready?"

The little party trudged down the stairs and out upon the avenue upon which their hotel fronted.

"Guess we'd better take a hansom," said the Unwiseman as they emerged from the door. "We'll save time going that way if the driver knows his business. We'll just tell him to go where we want to go, and in that way we won't have to keep asking these Roberts the way round."

"Roberts?" asked Mollie, forgetting the little incident at Liverpool.

"Oh well--the Bobbies--the pleecemen," replied the Unwiseman. "I want to get used to 'em before I call them that."

So they all climbed into a hansom cab.

"Where to, sir?" asked the cabby, through the little hole in the roof.

"Well I suppose we ought to call on the King first," said the Unwiseman to Mollie. "Don't you?"

"I guess so," said Mollie timidly.

"To the King's," said the Unwiseman, through the little hole.

"Beg pardon!" replied the astonished cabby.

"Don't mention it," said the Unwiseman. "Drive to the King's house first and apologize afterwards."

"I only wanted to know where you wished to go, sir," said the cabby.

"The King's, stupid," roared the Unwiseman, "Mr. Edward S.

King's--didn't you ever hear of him?"

"To the Palace, sir?" asked the driver.

"Of course unless his h. r. h. is living in a tent somewhere--and hurry up. We didn't engage you for the pleasures of conversation, but to drive us," said the Unwiseman severely.