When his friends found him there was blood on his forehead. Harry
thought it was where the Dragon had clawed him, but they said it was a
cut from a fragment of the broken brandy bottle. The Dragons had
disappeared as completely as the brandy.
Harry was cured of snapping. He had had quite enough of it for a
lifetime, and the catch-contradictions of the household now made him
shudder. Polly had not had the benefit of his experiences, and yet she
improved also.
In the first place, snapping, like other kinds of quarrelling, requires
two parties to it, and Harry would never be a party to snapping any
more. And when he gave civil and kind answers to Polly's smart
speeches, she felt ashamed of herself, and did not repeat them.
In the second place, she heard about the Snap-Dragons. Harry told all
about it to her and to the hot-tempered gentleman.
"Now do you think it's true?" Polly asked the hot-tempered gentleman.
"Hum! Ha!" said he, driving his hands through his hair. "You know I
warned you, you were going to the Snap-Dragons."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harry and Polly snubbed "the little ones" when they snapped, and utterly
discountenanced snapping in the nursery. The example and admonitions of
elder children are a powerful instrument of nursery discipline, and
before long there was not a "sharp tongue" amongst all the little
Skratdjs.
But I doubt if the parents ever were cured. I don't know if they heard
the story. Besides, bad habits are not easily cured when one is old.