Part 66

'I'll spare him if he'll promise to be good.'

'You will, ducky, won't you?' said the nurse, crying.

'No,' said the Magician, 'I won't; and what's more, I can't.'

The Princess, who was now so happy that she wanted every one else to be happy too, begged her lover to make Taykin good 'by magic.'

'Alas, my dearest Lady,' said the Prince, 'no one can be made good by magic. I could take the badness out of him--there's an excellent recipe in this note-book--but if I did that there'd be so very little left.'

'Every little helps,' said the nurse wildly.

Prince Fortunatus, who was James, who was the apprentice, studied the book for a few moments, and then said a few words in a language no one present had ever heard before.

And as he spoke the wicked Magician began to tremble and shrink.

'Oh, my boy--be good! Promise you'll be good,' cried the nurse, still in tears.

The Magician seemed to be shrinking inside his clothes. He grew smaller and smaller. The nurse caught him in her arms, and still he grew less and less, till she seemed to be holding nothing but a bundle of clothes. Then with a cry of love and triumph she tore the Magician's clothes away and held up a chubby baby boy, with the very plaid frock and fat legs she had so often and so lovingly described.

'I said there wouldn't be much of him when the badness was out,' said the Prince Fortunatus.

'I will be good; oh, I will,' said the baby boy that had been the Magician.

'I'll see to that,' said the nurse. And so the story ends with love and a wedding, and showers of white roses.