"Queerest man I ever saw!" whispered the new doll to Flaxilocks.
"But I didn't stop there," said the Unwiseman. "I made up my mind that I wouldn't grow any older this year. I'm going to stay seven hundred, just as I am now, always. Seven hundred is old enough for anybody, and I'm not going to be greedy about my years when I have enough. Let somebody else have the years, say I."
"Very wise and very generous," said Mollie; "but I don't see just how you are going to manage it."
"Me neither," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I do'see how you're going to do that."
"Simple enough," said the Unwiseman. "I've stopped the clock."
Gyp turned his head to one side as the Unwiseman spoke and looked at him earnestly for a few seconds, and then, as if overcome with mirth at the idea, he rushed out of the door and chased his tail around the house three times.
"What an extraordinary animal that is," said the Unwiseman. "He must be very young."
"He is," said Mollie. "He is nothing but a puppy."
"Well, it seems to me he wastes a good deal of strength," said the Unwiseman. "Why, if I should run around the house that way three times I'd be so tired I'd have to hire a man to help me rest."
"Are you really seven hundred years old?" queried the new doll, who, I think, would have followed Gyp's example and run around the house herself if she had thought it was dignified and was not afraid of spoiling her new three-button shoes.