lums could only rattle--couldn't tick, ne'er a click; all the
clockies stopped their ticking: no more clicking; then they all struck
loud "cling-clang." Dollies! Don't your heads downhang! Hink and hank,
and honk and hank. Doll-girls! don't your heads downhang! Cling and
ring! The battle's over--Nutcracker all safe in clover. Comes the owl,
on downy wing--Scares away the mouses' king. Pak and pik and pik and
pook--clocks, bim-boom--grr-grr. Pendulums must click again. Tick and
tack, grr and brr, prr and purr.'

"Marie fixed wide eyes of terror upon Godpapa Drosselmeier, because he
was looking quite different, and far more horrid, than usual, and was
jerking his right arm backwards and forwards as if he were some puppet
moved by a handle. She was beginning to grow terribly frightened at him
when her mother came in, and Fritz (who had arrived in the meantime)
laughed heartily, crying, 'Why, godpapa, you _are_ going on funnily!
You're just like my old Jumping Jack that I threw away last month.'

"But the mother looked very grave, and said, 'This is a most
extraordinary way of going on, Mr. Drosselmeier. What can you mean by
it?'

"'My goodness!' said Drosselmeier, laughing, 'did you never hear my
nice Watchmaker's Song? I always sing it to little invalids like
Marie.' Then he hastened to sit down beside Marie's bed, and said
to her, 'Don't be vexed with me because I didn't gouge out all the
mouse-king's fourteen eyes. That couldn't be managed exactly; but, to
make up for it, here's something which I know will please you greatly.'

"He dived into one of his pockets, and what he slowly, slowly brought
out of it was--Nutcracker! whose teeth he had put in again quite
firmly, and set his broken jaw completely to rights. Marie shouted for
joy, and her mother laughed and said, 'Now you see for yourself how
nice Godpapa Drosselmeier is to Nutcracker.'

"'But you must admit, Marie,' said her godpapa, 'that Nutcracker is far
from being what you might call a handsome fellow, and you can't say he
has a pretty face. If you like I'll tell you how it was that the
ugliness came into his family, and has been handed down in it from one
generation to another. Did ever you hear about the Princess Pirlipat,
the witch Mouseyrinks, and the clever Clockmaker?'

"I say, Godpapa Drosselmeier,' interrupted Fritz at this juncture,
'you've put Nutcracker's teeth in again all right, and his jaw isn't
wobbly as it was; but what's become of his swo