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5o
MOONFOLK.
the bread and cheese on a shelf in the kitchen ;
after a
while, though, the rats and the mice that
Bow-bells sent
wandering all over the moon, found me out, and I had
no peace day nor night from them. At last, one day,
as I was laying about me with a broomstick, trying to kill
or drive away a few of my tormentors, Baron Bluebeard,
who was riding by, stopped to see what was the matter;
for I suppose I made a good deal of noise. When
I had explained the case to him, he smiled horribly,
and said :
" '
Get a wife, Little Boy, that's ,the way to do. Get
a wife !
'
" Then he rode on, and I sat down to think of
his advice. It seemed to me pretty good ;
and the
next time I went to Moonopolis, I asked Lydia Locket
to marry me. She agreed, in case she found her pocket
before the wedding. While we were still talking, Kitty
Fisher stepped in to say that she had found it. The
only trouble then was, that the Lockets lived in the
very middle of the city,
and the lanes were so narrow
that no coach could get into them, although some of the
streets were ridiculously wide. The only way seemed
to be for me to bring my wife home in a wheel-barrow ;
for of course the Lockets, who are very smart people,
would not let a daughter of theirs walk to her wedding
" Lydia agreed to the wheel-barrow, and we were
married all right ;
but on the way home, the unlucky
wheel-barrow broke down, and spilt Lydia into the mud,