"You have to," retorted the Unwiseman. "If you didn't, she'd pack you up in a box and send you out to the sheathen."
"The what?" asked Mollie.
"The Sheathen."
"The sheathen. Little girl savages. I call 'em sheathen to extinguish them from heathen, who are, as I understand it, little boy savages," explained the Unwiseman. "But what do you think of this for a poem. It's called Night, and you mustn't laugh at it because it is serious:
"Oh night, dear night, in street and park,
Where'er thou beest thou'rt always dark.
Thou dustent change, O sweet brunette,
No figgleness is thine, you bet.
And what I love the best, on land or sea,
Is absence of the vice of figglety."
"What's figglety?" asked Mollie.
"Figglety?" echoed the Unwiseman. "Don't you know that? Figglety is figgleness, or the art of being figgle."
"But I don't know what being figgle is," said Mollie.