's was christenings--royal christenings. He always
expected to be asked to the christening parties of all the little royal
babies, and of course he never was, because he was not a lord, or a
duke, or a seller of bacon and tea, or anything really high-class, but
merely a wicked magician, who by economy and strict attention to
customers had worked up a very good business of his own. He had not
always been wicked. He was born quite good, I believe, and his old
nurse, who had long since married a farmer and retired into the calm of
country life, always used to say that he was the duckiest little boy in
a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs. But he had changed since
he was a boy, as a good many other people do--perhaps it was his trade.
I dare say you've noticed that cobblers are usually thin, and brewers
are generally fat, and magicians are almost always wicked.

Well, his weakness (for christenings) grew stronger and stronger because
it was never indulged, and at last he 'took the bull into his own
hands,' as the Irish footman at the palace said, and went to a
christening without being asked. It was a very grand party given by the
King of the Fortunate Islands, and the little prince was christened
Fortunatus. No one took any notice of Professor Taykin. They were too
polite to turn him out, but they made him wish he'd never come. He felt
quite an outsider, as indeed he was, and this made him furious. So that
when all the bright, light, laughing, fairy godmothers were crowding
round the blue satin cradle, and giving gifts of beauty and strength and
goodness to the baby, the Magician suddenly did a very difficult charm
(in his head, like you do mental arithmetic), and said:

'Young Forty may be all that, but _I_ say he shall be the stupidest
prince in the world,' and on that he vanished in a puff of red smoke
with a smell like the Fifth of November in a back garden on Streatham
Hill, and as he left no address the King of the Fortunate Islands
couldn't prosecute him for high treason.

Taykin was very glad to think that he had made such a lot of people
unhappy--the whole Court was in tears when he left, including the
baby--and he looked in the papers for another royal christening, so that
he could go to that and make a lot more people miserable. And there was
one fixed for the very next Wednesday. The Magician went to that, too,
disguised as a wealthy.

This time the baby was a girl. Taykin kept close to the pink ve