The nephew and niece were afraid to risk a guess, and the papa had to say:
"The Khant! The fairy godmother pulled her inside and hugged her and kissed her, she was so glad to find out that she was the one; and she stopped the procession on the spot, and she called up the Imam, and he married the Khant to Prince--"
The papa stopped, and as the niece and nephew hesitated, he said, very sternly, "Well?"
The fact is, they had got so mixed up about the Khan and the Khant of Tartary that they had forgotten which was Butterflyflutterby and which was Flutterbybutterfly. They tried, shouting out one the one and the other the other, but the papa said:
"Oh no! That won't work. I've had that sort of thing tried on me before, and it never works. I heard you whispering what you would do, and you have simply added the crime of double-dealing to the crime of inattention. The story has stopped, and stopped forever."
The nephew stretched himself and then sat up in bed. "Well, it had got to the end, anyway."
"Oh, had it? What became of the wicked enchantress?" The nephew lay down again, in considerable dismay.
"Uncle," said the niece, very coaxingly, "I didn't say it had come to the end."
"But it has," said the papa. "And I'm mighty glad you forgot the Prince's name, for the rule of this story is that it has to go on as long as any one listening remembers, and it might have gone on forever."
"I suppose," the nephew said, "a person may guess?"
"He may, if he guesses right. If he guesses wrong, he has to be thrown from a high tower--the same one the wicked enchantress was thrown from."
"There!" shouted the nephew; "you said you wouldn't tell. How high was the tower, anyway, uncle? As high as the Eiffel Tower in Paris?"
"Not quite. It was three feet and five inches high."
"Ho! Then the enchantress was a dwarf!"
"Who said she was a dwarf?"
"There wouldn't be any use throwing her from the tower if she wasn't."
"I didn't say it was any use. They just did it for ornament."