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<h2> IV. HOW BLACKSTICK WAS NOT ASKED TO THE PRINCESS ANGELICA’S CHRISTENING </h2>
<p>When the Princess Angelica was born, her parents not only did not ask the
Fairy Blackstick to the christening party, but gave orders to their porter
absolutely to refuse her if she called. This porter’s name was Gruffanuff,
and he had been selected for the post by their Royal Highnesses because he
was a very tall fierce man, who could say ‘Not at home’ to a tradesman or
an unwelcome visitor with a rudeness which frightened most such persons
away. He was the husband of that Countess whose picture we have just seen,
and as long as they were together they quarrelled from morning till night.
Now this fellow tried his rudeness once too often, as you shall hear. For
the Fairy Blackstick coming to call upon the Prince and Princess, who were
actually sitting at the open drawing-room window, Gruffanuff not only
denied them, but made the most ODIOUS VULGAR SIGN as he was going to slam
the door in the Fairy’s face! ‘Git away, hold Blackstick!’ said he. ‘I
tell you, Master and Missis ain’t at home to you;’ and he was, as we have
said, GOING to slam the door.</p>
<p>But the Fairy, with her wand, prevented the door being shut; and
Gruffanuff came out again in a fury, swearing in the most abominable way,
and asking the Fairy ‘whether she thought he was a going to stay at that
there door hall day?’</p>
<p>‘You ARE going to stay at that door all day and all night, and for many a
long year,’ the Fairy said, very majestically; and Gruffanuff, coming out
of the door, straddling before it with his great calves, burst out
laughing, and cried, ‘Ha, ha, ha! this is a good un! Ha—ah—what’s
this? Let me down—O—o—H’m!’ and then he was dumb!</p>
<p>For, as the Fairy waved her wand over him, he felt himself rising off the
ground, and fluttering up against the door, and then, as if a screw ran
into his stomach, he felt a dreadful pain there, and was pinned to the
door; and then his arms flew up over his head; and his legs, after
writhing about wildly, twisted under his body; and he felt cold, cold,
growing over him, as if he was turning into metal; and he said, ‘O—o—H’m!’
and could say no more, because he was dumb.</p>
<p>He WAS turned into metal! He was, from being BRAZEN, BRASS! He was neither
more nor less than a knocker! And there he was, nailed to the door in the
blazing summer day, till he burned almost red-hot; and there he was,
nailed to the door all the bitter winter nights, till his brass nose was
dropping with icicles. And the postman came and rapped at him, and the
vulgarest boy with a letter came and hit him up against the door. And the
King and Queen (Princess and Prince they were then) coming home from a
walk that evening, the King said, ‘Hullo, my dear! you have had a new
knocker put on the door. Why, it’s rather like our porter in the face!
What has become of that boozy vagabond?’ And the house-maid came and
scrubbed his nose with sandpaper; and once, when the Princess Angelica’s
little sister was born, he was tied up in an old kid glove; and, another
night, some LARKING young men tried to wrench him off, and put him to the
most excruciating agony with a turn screw. And then the Queen had a fancy
to have the colour of the door altered; and the painters dabbed him over
the mouth and eyes, and nearly choked him, as they painted him pea-green.
I warrant he had leisure to repent of having been rude to the Fairy
Blackstick!</p>
<p>As for his wife, she did not miss him; and as he was always guzzling beer
at the public-house, and notoriously quarrelling with his wife, and in
debt to the tradesmen, it was supposed he had run away from all these
evils, and emigrated to Australia or America. And when the Prince and
Princess chose to become King and Queen, they left their old house, and
nobody thought of the porter any more.</p>
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