“Well, I think it is your duty,” said Peggy. “Don’t you, Wooden?”
“Well, dear,” said Wooden, “if we all did our duty as well as Captain Louisa, we might be very proud of ourselves.”
Captain Louisa looked proudly at Peggy. “You see what she thinks of me,” he said. “And it isn’t only me either. My men would follow me anywhere.”
Mrs. Winifred rose from her seat. “I’m afraid I must say good-bye, dear Mrs. Wooden,” she said. “I am so glad you have been let out of prison. And I’m so glad that Queen Rosebud isn’t dead. Somehow, I could never feel that she was.”
All the dolls rose one after the other to say good-bye. They all said they were glad that Queen Rosebud was alive, and some of them said that she ought not to stay in prison a moment longer. But none of them seemed interested in how she was to be got out, or in what should happen afterwards, except that Mrs. Mollie said she hoped Rose would get her deserts, and Mrs. Ida said that they saw now what came of Compositions giving themselves airs. However much they seemed to be different from one another in their way of talking and looking at things, they all seemed alike in having no idea of acting for themselves. They were very nice, but Peggy thought that if she had been the Queen in prison she would hardly have felt so confident as Queen Rosebud had been of her doll subjects getting her out again.
All the dolls rose to say good-bye
However, the Lord Chancellor, who stayed behind, did seem to think that something ought to be done, though he seemed disinclined to do it himself. “When the people get to know of this,” he said, “I’m afraid there will be trouble. The question is, how to act so as to save trouble.”
“I should think the question was how to get poor Queen Rosebud out of prison as soon as possible,” said Peggy.
“Well, certainly there is that side of it,” he said. “The only thing is that if she comes out of prison and goes back to the palace, there will be two of them—a King and a Queen—and that is something that it is very difficult to know how to deal with, without a great deal of careful thought. If King Selim could marry Queen Rosebud, now! How does that strike you as a way of getting over the difficulty?”