"I'm very sorry," said Mollie; "and if you want me to I'll punish Gyp."
"What good would that do me?" queried the Unwiseman. "If chaining him up would restore even half the poem, I'd say go ahead and chain him up; but it won't. The poem's gone, and there's nothing left for me to do but go in the house and stick my head out of the window and cry."
"Perhaps you can write another poem," said Mollie.
"That's true—I hadn't thought of that," said the Unwiseman. "But I don't think I'd better to-day. I've lost more money by the destruction of that first poem than I can afford. If I should have another ruined to-day, I'd be bankrupt."
"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," said Mollie. "I'll ask papa to let me give you a lead-pencil and a pad to write your next poem on. How will that do?"
"I should be very grateful," said the Unwiseman; "and if with these he could give me a few dozen ideas and a rhyming dictionary it would be a great help."
"I'll ask him," said Mollie. "I'll ask him right away, and I haven't any doubt that he'll say yes, because he always gives me things I want if they aren't harmful."
"Very well," said the Unwiseman. "And you may tell him for me, Miss Whistlebinkie, that I'll show him how grateful I am to him and to you for your kind assistance by letting him have the first thousand yards of poetry I write for his paper at fifty cents a yard, which is just half what I shall make other people pay for them."
And so Mollie and Whistlebinkie bade the Unwiseman good-by for the time being, and went home. As Mollie had predicted, her father was very glad to give her the pencil and the pad and a rhyming dictionary; but as he had no ideas to spare at the moment he had to deny the little maid that part of the request.
