Part 22

‘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.

and here ends the Fireside Pantomime.