THE HISTORY OF A NUT-CRACKER. 25

“‘ Now you are silly, my dear boy,” observed the judge:
“you see that it is impossible for you to enter the house,
since the vanes on the top of the towers scarcely come up to
your shoulders.”

Fritz yielded to this reasoning and held his tongue; but
ina few moments, seeing that the ladies and gentlemen kept
on walking, that the children would not leave off dancing,
that the gentleman with the furred cloak appeared and dis-
appeared at ae intervals, and that Godfather Drossel-
mayer did not leave the door, he again broke silence.

‘My dear godpapa,” said he, ‘‘if all these little figures
can do nothing more than what they are doing over and over
again, you may take them away to-morrow, for I do not care
about them; and I like my horse much better, because it
runs when I choose—and my hussars, because they man-
ceuvre at my command, and wheel to the right or left, or
march forward or backward, and are not shut up in any
house like your poor little people who can only move over
and over in the same way.

With these words he turned his back upon Godfather
Drosselmayer and the house, hastened to the table, and
drew up his hussars in battle array.

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away very gently, because the
Been JF fhe Peele figures in
the house seemed to her to be
very tiresome: but, as she was
a charming child, she said
= nothing, for fear of wounding
the feelings of Godpapa Dros-
. = ue selmayer. Indeed, the moment
Fritz had turned his back, the doctor said to the judge and
his wife, in a tone of vexation, ‘‘ This master-piece is not fit
for children ; and I will put my house back again into the
box, and take it away.” :
But the judge’s wife approached him, and, in order to

 

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