"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 bump over them so hard they make-smee-wissle."
"You're all right when you whistle, Fizzledinkie," 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."