cold, growing over him, as if he was turning into metal; and he said,
'O--o--H'm!' and could say no more, because he was dumb.

He WAS turned into metal! He was, from being BRAZEN, BRASS! He was
neither more nor less than a knocker! And there he was, nailed to the
door in the blazing summer day, till he burned almost red-hot; and there
he was, nailed to the door all the bitter winter nights, till his brass
nose was dropping with icicles. And the postman came and rapped at him,
and the vulgarest boy with a letter came and hit him up against the
door. And the King and Queen (Princess and Prince they were then) coming
home from a walk that evening, the King said, 'Hullo, my dear! you have
had a new knocker put on the door. Why, it's rather like our porter in
the face! What has become of that boozy vagabond?' And the house-maid
came and scrubbed his nose with sandpaper; and once, when the Princess
Angelica's little sister was born, he was tied up in an old kid glove;
and, another night, some LARKING young men tried to wrench him off, and
put him to the most excruciating agony with a turn screw. And then
the Queen had a fancy to have the colour of the door altered; and the
painters dabbed him over the mouth and eyes, and nearly choked him, as
they painted him pea-green. I warrant he had leisure to repent of having
been rude to the Fairy Blackstick!

As for his wife, she did not miss him; and as he was always guzzling
beer at the public-house, and notoriously quarrelling with his wife, and
in debt to the tradesmen, it was supposed he had run away from all these
evils, and emigrated to Australia or America. And when the Prince and
Princess chose to become King and Queen, they left their old house, and
nobody thought of the porter any more.