"Then ..." groaned his unfortunate elder, "I'm done!"
"That's true, anyways! Congrats!"
Whaley had already picked up half a brick, but his tormenter had seen the gesture, and had dropped on the far side of the wall to the high bank below, and was off to rejoin his quarters. He knew that the mighty had fallen and would trouble him no more.
So ends the saga.
[TALE-PIECE]
It was the custom of our grandfathers and grandmothers—when they had any of them been fool enough to write a novel—to wind it up with a description of what the various characters in the beastly thing were doing at the moment when the book appeared—that is, supposedly, in a future some little while after the closing of the tale.
Those of you who still read the novels of my own youth—and I for one read no others—will remember that they are invariably concerned with a well-to-do young woman of exquisite beauty who marries a manly young fellow of her own status, after various ups and downs. Then the book goes on to tell you that they have twenty-six boys and girls with long curly hair, all gold. And then the band plays.
It is not easy for me to give you an appendix of this kind, because I have always thought it prudent to throw my own novels into the future, lest I should be sent to gaol for insulting the rich. Moreover, even if I did describe the final fate of my characters, I cannot make it a very pleasant one without treason to the realities of human life and the flattering of fools: and rather than flatter fools let me be torn to pieces by wild horses after the fashion of the Merovingian queens.
However, I propose to give you some idea of how the various people you have come across in these pages continued their not too significant lives.