So then the Blue Captain, who had not had anything, even on the point of his sword, said— “More—more, my gallant men are fainting for lack of food.” So there was nothing for it but to bring out the candied fruits, and to feed the soldiers with them. So Fabian and Rosamund stuck bits of candied apricot and fig and pear and cherry and beetroot on the tops of the soldiers’ bayonets, and when every soldier had a piece they put a fat candied cherry on the officer’s sword. Then the children knew the soldiers would be quiet for a few minutes, and they ran back into their own house and into the library to talk to each other about what they had better do, for they both felt that the blue soldiers were a very hard-hearted set of men. “They might shut us up in the dungeons,” said Rosamund, “and then Mother might lock us in, when she shut up the lid of the bureau, and we should starve to death.” For they could not be sure exactly what size they were, or which library their Mother would come back to when she had given away all the flannel petticoats and things. The dungeons were the pigeon-holes of the bureau, and the doors of them were the little “Beauties of Literature”—very heavy doors they were too. You see the curious thing was that the children had built a town and got into it, and in it they had found their own house with the very town they had built—or one exactly like it—still on the library floor. “I think it’s all nonsense,” said Rosamund. But when they looked out of the window there was the house with Windsor Castle and the head of Rebecca just opposite. “If we could only find Mother,” she said; but they knew without looking that Mother was not in the house that they were in then. “I wish we had that mouse that looked like clockwork—and the donkey, and the other box of soldiers—perhaps they are red ones, and they would fight the blue and lick them—because red-coats are English and they always win,” said Fabian. And then Rosamund said— “Oh, Fabe, I believe we could go into _this_ town, too, if we tried! Let us put all the things in, and then try!” So they went to the bureau drawer, and Rosamund got out the other box of soldiers and the mouse—it _was_ a clockwork one—and the donkey with panniers, and put them in the town, while Fabian ate up a few odd raisins that had dropped on the floor. When all the soldiers (they _were_ red) were arranged on the ramparts of the little town, Fabian said— “I am thinking of all the raisins and things on the soldiers’ bayonets outside. It seems a pity not to eat the things for them.” But Rosamund said— “No, no; let’s get into this town, and perhaps we shall be safe from the blue soldiers. Oh, Fabe, never mind the raisins!” But Fabian said, “I don’t want you to come if you’re frightened. I’ll go alone. Who’s afraid?”