"I can tell," said the Unwiseman. "I've already seen 'em and they haven't as much conversation as a fried oyster. I went down there yesterday and spent two hours with 'em, and a more unapproachable lot you never saw in your life. I was just as polite to 'em as I knew how to be. Asked 'em how they liked the British climate. Told 'em long stories of my house at home. Invited a lot of 'em to come over and meet my burgular just as I did the King and not a one of 'em even so much as thanked me. They just stood off there in their glass cases and acted as if they never saw me, and if they did, hadn't the slightest desire to see me again. You don't catch me calling on them a second time."
"But there are other things in the Museum, aren't there?" asked Mollie.
The Unwiseman's gloom disappeared for a moment in a loud burst of laughter.
"Such a collection of odds and ends," he cried, with a sarcastic shake of his head. "I never saw so much broken crockery in all my life. It looks to me as if they'd bought up all the old broken china in the world. There are tea-pots without nozzles by the thousand. Old tin cans, all rusted up and with dents in 'em from everywhere. Cracked plates by the million, and no end of water-pitchers with the handles broken off, and chipped vases and goodness knows what all. And they call that a museum! Just you give me a half a dozen bricks and a crockery shop over in America and in five minutes I'll make that British Museum stuff look like a sixpence. When I saw it first, I was pretty mad to think I'd taken the trouble to go and look at it, and then as I went on and couldn't find a whole tea-cup in the entire outfit, and saw people with catalogues in their hands saying how wonderful everything was, I just had to sit down on the floor and roar with laughter."
"But the statuary, Mr. Me," said Mollie. "That was pretty fine I guess, wasn't it? I've heard it's a splendid collection."
"Worse than the crockery," laughed the Unwiseman. "There's hardly a statue in the whole place that isn't broken. Seems to me they're the most careless lot of people over here with their museums. Half the statues didn't have any heads on 'em. A good quarter of them had busted arms and legs, and on one of 'em there wasn't anything left but a pair of shoulder blades and half a wing sticking out at the back. It looked more like a quarry than a museum to me, and in a mighty bad state of repair even for a quarry. That was where they put me out," the old gentleman added.
"Put you out?" cried Mollie. "Oh Mr. Me—you don't mean to say they actually put you out of The British Museum?"
"I do indeed," said the Unwiseman with a broad grin on his face. "They just grabbed me by my collar and hustled me along the floor to the great door and dejected me just as if I didn't have any more feeling than their old statues. It's a wonder the way I landed I wasn't as badly busted up as they are."
"But what for? You were not misbehaving yourself, were you?" asked Mollie, very much disturbed over this latest news.