THE HISTORY OF A NUT-CRACKER. 57

seeing her mother; ‘are all those horrible mice gone ? and
is my poor Nut-cracker saved?”

“Vor the love of heaven, my dear Mary, do not repeat
all that nonsense,” said the lady. ‘* What have mice, I
' should like to know, to do with the Nut-cracker? But you,
naughty girl, have frightened us all sadly. And it is always
so when children are obstinate and will not obey their parents.
You played with your toys very late last night: you most
likely fell asleep; and it is probable that a little mouse
frightened you. At all events, in your alarm, you thrust
your elbow through one of the panes of the cupboard, and
cut your arm in such a manner that Mr. Vandlestern, who
has just extracted the fragments of glass, declares that you
ran a risk of cutting an artery and dying through loss of
blood. Heaven be thanked that I awoke—I know not at
what o’clock—and that, recollecting how I had left you in
the room, I went down to look after you. Poor child! you
were stretched upon the floor, near the cupboard; and all
round you were strewed the dolls, the puppets, the punches,
the leaden soldiers, pieces of the gingerbread men, and
Fritz’s hussars—all scattered about pell-mell—while in your
arms you held the Nut-cracker. But how was it that you
had taken off one of your shoes, and that it was at some
distance from you?”

‘Ah! my dear mother,” said Mary, shuddering as she
thought of what had taken place; ‘‘all that you saw was
caused by the great battle that took place between the
puppets and the mice: but the reason of my terror was that
I saw the victorious mice about to seize upon the poor Nut-
cracker, who commanded the puppets;—and it was then that
I threw my shoe at the king of the mice. After that, I
know not what happened.”

The surgeon made a sign to the judge’s lady, who said
in a soft tone to Mary, “ Do not think any more of all that,
my dear child. All the mice are gone, and the little Nut-
cracker is safe and comfortable in the glass cupboard.”