roast turkey."

"I should think so," said Mollie. "That's one of the nice things about being a little girl——you're not expected to smoke."

"Well I don't know about that," said the Unwiseman. "Far as I can remember I never was a little girl so I don't know what was expected of me as such, but as far as I'm concerned I'm perfectly willing to let the pipe get smoked in the fire-place, and keep my mouth for expressing thoughts and eating bananas and eclairs with, and my throat for giving three cheers on the Fourth of July, and swallowing apple pie. That's what they were made for and hereafter that's what I'm going to use 'em for. Where's Miss Flaxilocks?"

Miss Flaxilocks was Mollie's little friend and almost constant companion, the French doll with the deepest of blue eyes and the richest of golden hair from which she got her name.

"She couldn't come to-day," explained Mollie.

"Stoo-wexited," whistled Whistlebinkie.

"What's that?" asked the Unwiseman. "Sounds like a clogged-up radiator."

"He means to say that she is too excited to come," said Mollie. "The fact is, Mr. Unwiseman, we're all going abroad——"

"Abroad?" demanded the Unwiseman. "Where's that?"

"Hoh!" jeered Whistlebinkie. "Doesn't know where abroad is!"

"How should I know where abroad is?" retorted the Unwiseman. "I never had any. What is it anyhow? A new kind of pie?"

"No," laughed Mollie. "Abroad is Europe, and England and——"

"And Swizz-izzer-land," put in Whistlebinkie.

"Swizz-what?" cried the Unwiseman.

"Switzerland," said Mollie. "It's Switzerland, Whistlebinkie."

"Thass-watised, Swizz-izzerland," said Whistlebinkie.

"What's the good of them?" asked the Unwiseman.

"O they're nice places to visit," said Mollie.

"Do you walk there?" asked the Unwiseman.

"No—of course not," said Mollie with a smile. "They're thousands of miles away, across the ocean."

"Across the ocean?" ejaculated the Unwiseman. "Mercy! Ain't the ocean that wet place down around New Jersey somewhere?"

"Yes," said Mollie. "The Atlantic Ocean."

"Humph!" said the Unwiseman. "How you going to get across? There ain't any bridges over it, are there?"

"No indeed," said Mollie.

"Nor no trolleys?" demanded the Unwiseman.

Mollie's reply was a loud laugh, and Whistlebinkie whistled with glee.

"Going in a balloon, I suppose," sneered the Unwiseman. "That is all of you but old Sizzerinktum here. I suppose he's going to try and jump across. Smart feller, old Sizzerinktum."

"I ain't neither!" retorted Whistlebinkie.

"Ain't neither what—smart?" said the Unwiseman.

"No—ain't goin' to jump," said Whistlebinkie.

"Good thing too," observed the Unwiseman approvingly. "If you did you'd bounce so high when you landed that I don't believe you'd ever come down."

"We're going in a boat," said Mollie. "Not a row boat nor a sail boat," she hastened to explain, "but a great big ocean steamer, large enough to carry over a thousand people, and fast enough to cross in six days."

"Silly sort of business," said the Unwiseman. "What's the good of going to Europe and Swazzoozalum—or whatever the place is—when you haven't seen Albany or Troy, or New Rochelle and Yonkers, or Michigan and Patterson?"

"O well," said Mollie, "Papa's tired and he's going to take a vacation and we're all going along to help him rest, and Flaxilocks is so excited about going back to Paris where she was born that I have had to keep her in her crib all the time to keep her from getting nervous procrastination."

"I see," said the Unwiseman. "But I don't see why if people are tired they don't stay home and go to bed. That's the way to rest. Just lie in bed a couple of days without moving."

"Yes," said Mollie. "But Papa needs the salt air to brace him up."

"What of it?" demanded the Unwiseman. "Can't you get salt air without going across the ocean? Seems to me if you just fill up a pillow with salt and sleep on that, the way you do on one of those pine-needle pillows from the Dadirondacks, you'd get all the salt air you wanted, or build a salt cellar under your house and run pipes from it up to your bedroom to carry the air through."

"It wouldn't be the same, at all," said Mollie. "Besides we're going to see the Alps."

"Oh—that's different. Of course if you're going to see the Alps that's very different," said the Unwiseman. "I wouldn't mind seeing an Alp or two myself. I always was interested in animals. I've often wondered why they never had any Alps at the Zoo."

"I guess they're too big to bring over," said Mollie gravely.

"Maybe so, but even then if they catch 'em young I don't see," began the Unwiseman.

Whistlebinkie's behavior at this point was such that Mollie, fearing a renewal of the usual quarrel between her friends ran hastily on to the object of their call and told the Unwiseman that they had come to bid him good-bye.

"I wish you were going with us," she said as she shook the old gentleman's hand.

"Thank you very much," he replied. "I suppose it would be nice, but I have too many other things to attend to and I don't see how I could spare the time. In the first place I've got all those commas and Qs to look after, and then if I went away there'd be nobody around to see that my pipe was smoked every day, or to finish up my newspaper. Likewise also too in addition the burgulars might get into my house some night while I was away and take the wrong things because I haven't been able yet to let 'em know just what I'm willing to have 'em run off with, so you see how badly things would get mixed if I went away."

"I suppose they would," sighed Mollie.

"There'd be nobody here to exercise my umbrella on wet days, either," continued the old gentleman, "or to see that the roof leaked just right, or to cook my meals and eat 'em. No—I don't just see how I could manage it." And so the old gentleman bade his visitors good-bye.

"TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, FIZZLEDINKIE, AND DON'T BLOW TOO MUCH THROUGH THE TOP OF YOUR HAT"

"Take care of yourself, Fizzledinkie," he observed to Whistlebinkie, "and don't blow too much through the top of your hat. I've heard of boats being upset by sudden squalls, and you might get the whole party in trouble by the careless use of that hat of yours."

Mollie and her companion with many waves of their hands back at the Unwiseman made off up the road homeward. The old gentleman gazed after them thoughtfully for awhile, and then returned to his work on his newspaper.

"Queer people—some of 'em," he muttered as he cut out his ninety-ninth Q and noted the ten-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-eighth comma on his pollywog tally sheet. "Mighty queer. With a country of their own right outside their front door so big that they couldn't walk around it in less than forty-eight hours, they've got to go abroad just to see an old Alp cavorting around in Whizzizalum or whatever else that place Whistlebinkie was trying to talk about is named. I'd like to see an Alp myself, but after all as long as there's plenty of elephants and rhinoceroses up at the Zoo what's the good of chasing around after other queer looking beasts getting your feet wet on the ocean, and having your air served up with salt in it?"

And as there was nobody about to enlighten the old gentleman on these points he went to bed that night with