the spectacles were got, and the King mended his pen, and signed his
name to a reprieve, and Angelica ran with it as swift as the wind.
"You'd better stay, my love, and finish the muffins. There's no use
going. Be sure it's too late. Hand me over that raspberry jam, please,"
said the Monarch. "Bong! Bawong! There goes the half-hour. I knew it
was."

Angelica ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. She ran up Fore Street, and
down High Street, and through the Market-place, and down to the left,
and over the bridge, and up the blind alley, and back again, and round
by the Castle, and so along by the Haberdasher's on the right, opposite
the lamp-post, and round the square, and she came--she came to the
EXECUTION PLACE, where she saw Bulbo laying his head on the block!!! The
executioner raised his axe, but at that moment the Princess came panting
up and cried Reprieve! "Reprieve!" screamed the Princess. "Reprieve!"
shouted all the people. Up the scaffold stairs she sprang, with the
agility of a lighter of lamps; and flinging herself in Bulbo's arms,
regardless of all ceremony, she cried out, "Oh, my Prince! my lord! my
love! my Bulbo! Thine Angelica has been in time to save thy precious
existence, sweet rosebud; to prevent thy being nipped in thy young
bloom! Had aught befallen thee, Angelica too had died, and welcomed
death that joined her to her Bulbo."

"H'm! there's no accounting for tastes," said Bulbo, looking so very
much puzzled and uncomfortable that the Princess, in tones of tenderest
strain, asked the cause of his disquiet.

"I tell you what it is, Angelica," said he, "since I came here
yesterday, there has been such a row, and disturbance, and quarrelling,
and fighting, and chopping of heads off, and the deuce to pay, that I am
inclined to go back to Crim Tartary."

"But with me as thy bride, my Bulbo! Though wherever thou art is Crim
Tartary to me, my bold, my beautiful, my Bulbo!"

"Well, well, I suppose we must be married," says Bulbo. "Doctor, you
came to read the Funeral Service--read the Marriage Service, will you?
What must be, must. That will satisfy Angelica, and then, in the name of
peace and quietness, do let us go back to breakfast."

Bulbo had carried a rose in his mouth all the time of the dismal
ceremony. It was a fairy rose, and he was told by his mother that he
ought never to part with it. So he had kept it between his teeth, even
when he laid his poor head upon the block, hoping vaguely that so