At that moment Smaly, who was staring out of the window, nudged Redy, and looking out together they saw that the Wigs, who had been busily rebuilding the kitchen, had all fallen asleep in the market square because three o'clock was the hour of the afternoon's rest. The Confectioner, his hair streaming in the wind, was running hard towards his own house. He held by the hand Fritilla, the youngest of the Prisoner's daughters, whose big eyes were looking all about her as she ran. The Confectioner pushed her rapidly into his house and shut the door upon her, then he, too, fell asleep in the square like the other Wigs. This care which the Confectioner took of Fritilla was by no means unnecessary, as for several days she had been pursued by an enormous red Flying-Fish which declared that she had stolen from it its seven hundred and eighty-secondth feather. It declared that it had seen the plume actually in her hands, and that when it had gone home and counted its feathers over before going to sleep that night it only possessed seven hundred and eighty-one. [Illustration: THIS CARE WHICH THE CONFECTIONER TOOK OF FRITILLA WAS BY NO MEANS UNNECESSARY] * * * * * The smaller Flying-Fish now flew into the Historian's room, using its own little hole. It hated using this; but it seemed an even greater humiliation to use the big one, for that made the poor little Fish feel smaller than ever. Thus it came about that neither the big nor the little Flying-Fish ever used the larger hole, which had become all overgrown with delicate mosses and stonecrop, and even by a fine yellow wallflower. The windows in this country, if people did not look through them often enough, became almost opaque. [Illustration: The Smaller Flying-Fish] The little Flying-Fish seated itself on its perch, and called out: "It's nearly half-past three. We must rest. Everybody must rest. Let's go to sleep." And it, too, pulled down its eyelids with its left paw, buried its nose in a nightcap, and wrapped its wings round its head. The Historian stretched out a hand, took the six hard-boiled eggs from the Hen, dropped them through a hole in his beak, put the hand of the clock back to zero, then he, too, shut his eyes. "He sleeps," murmured Smaly and Redy. * * * * * Smaly tiptoed across to the Historian. [Illustration: DROPPED THEM THROUGH A HOLE IN HIS BEAK] He was a curious sort of man, extremely thin, his face dominated rather than adorned by an immense beak, which apparently he could not open; and he had little twinkling eyes like an elephant's, which twinkled even more when they were shut than when they were open. He wore a sort of wrapper, trimmed with fur round the neck, sleeves, and legs. Neither Redy nor Smaly could quite decide what the Historian was made of, whether of Manchester pudding, of pie-crust, or gingerbread, and they did not dare try and taste him for fear of waking him up.