says
Blackstick.

"To marry him, yes! What business is it of yours? Pray, madam, don't say
'you' to a Queen," cries Gruffanuff.

"You won't take the money he offered you?"

"No."

"You won't let him off his bargain, though you know you cheated him when
you made him sign the paper?"

"Impudence! Policemen, remove this woman!" cries Gruffanuff. And the
policemen were rushing forward, but with a wave of her wand the Fairy
struck them all like so many statues in their places.

"You won't take anything in exchange for your bond, Mrs. Gruffanuff,"
cries the Fairy, with awful severity. "I speak for the last time."

"No!" shrieks Gruffanuff, stamping with her foot. "I'll have my husband,
my husband, my husband!"

"YOU SHALL HAVE YOUR HUSBAND!" the Fairy Blackstick cried; and advancing
a step, laid her hand upon the nose of the KNOCKER.

As she touched it, the brass nose seemed to elongate, the open mouth
opened still wider, and uttered a roar which made everybody start.
The eyes rolled wildly; the arms and legs uncurled themselves, writhed
about, and seemed to lengthen with each twist; the knocker expanded into
a figure in yellow livery, six feet high; the screws by which it was
fixed to the door unloosed themselves, and JENKINS GRUFFANUFF once more
trod the threshold off which he had been lifted more than twenty years
ago!

"Master's not at home," says Jenkins, just in his old voice; and Mrs.
Jenkins, giving a dreadful YOUP, fell down in a fit, in which nobody
minded her.

For everybody was shouting, "Huzzay! huzzay!" "Hip, hip, hurray!" "Long
live the King and Queen!" "Were such things ever seen?" "No, never,
never, never!" "The Fairy Blackstick for ever!"

The bells were ringing double peals, the guns roaring and banging most
prodigiously. Bulbo was embracing everybody; the Lord Chancellor was
flinging up his wig and shouting like a madman; Hedzoff had got the
Archbishop round the waist, and they were dancing a jig for joy; and as
for Giglio, I leave you to imagine what HE was doing, and if he kissed
Rosalba once, twice--twenty thousand times, I'm sure I don't think he
was wrong.

So Gruffanuff opened the hall door with a low bow, just as he had been
accustomed to do, and they all went in and signed the book, and then
they went to church and were married, and the Fairy Blackstick sailed
away on her cane, and was never more heard of in Paflagonia.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Christmas Books,