"Then, I suppose, I can't come in at all," said Mollie.
"Oh, yes, you can," said the Unwiseman. "Have you an Alpine stock?"
"What's that?" said Mollie.
"Ho!" jeered the Unwiseman. "What's an Alpine stock! Ha, ha! Not to know that; I thought little girls knew everything."
"Well, they do generally," said Mollie, resolved to stand up for her kind. "But I'm not like all little girls. There are some things I don't know."
"I guess there are," said the Unwiseman, with a superior air. "You don't know what rancour means, or fixity, or garrulousness."
"No, I don't," Mollie admitted. "What do they mean?"
"I'm not in the school-teacher business, and so I shan't tell you," said the Unwiseman, with a wave of his hand. "Besides, I really don't know myself—though I'm not a little girl. But I'll tell you one thing. An Alpine stock is a thing to climb Alps with, and a thing you can climb an Alp with ought to help you climbing into a kitchen window, because kitchen windows aren't so high as Alps, and they don't have snow on 'em in spring like Alps do."
"Oh," said Mollie. "That's it—is it? Well, I haven't got one, and I don't know where to get one, so I can't get in that way."