“That was nothing,” said Captain Louisa modestly. “I was only doing my duty as a soldier should.”
They congratulated him heartily on his gallant feat of arms. He had said nothing about it himself, but it was plain that he was pleased at having it known to them. Peggy had thought it rather boastful of him when he had said in Wooden’s drawing-room that nobody would do his duty as a soldier better than he should, but it had turned out to be quite true. Wooden said how pleased his wife would be to hear what he had done, and his friend said that he would be made a Major for it, or perhaps even a Colonel.
They got off their horses at the entrance to the fort, for the streets were too narrow and steep to let them ride any more.
Dollfort was an old-fashioned though a very powerful fort. There were houses and shops in the narrow streets, and as they went up through them they saw the soldiers taking refreshment in the inns, which were rather foreign-looking, and made Peggy think of the places she had seen in France.
The two sides had already made friends again, and Leads and Woods were eating and drinking at the same tables, and talking in an eager way about the glorious fight they had had. That is the best of a toy army. When one side wins, the other side bears no malice, and of course the regiments that have fought each other today may very well be fighting on the same side tomorrow.
The ambulance corps had already finished its work inside the fort, and was on its way out to the soldiers still lying on the downs. All the defenders of the fort who had fallen had been picked up again, and, to judge by the merry noise they were making, were none the worse for the experience.
Captain Louisa and his friend walked up through the streets with them, and Peggy was interested to learn that the friend, whose name was Lieutenant Napoleon, belonged to a regiment which had defended the fort. He was very indignant at what he had heard about Selim. “Still, it was a good thing we didn’t know what a rascal he was,” he said, “or we shouldn’t have had this glorious scrap.”
That was the spirit of all the soldiers who had been fighting. They often had sham battles, but this had been a real one, and they had thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the knocking down of the houses outside the fort. They would not have been allowed to knock them down in a sham fight.
The exciting and interesting thing now was to find Selim and Rose, and get to know where they had hidden the Queen and Lady Grace and Wooden’s mother.
Lieutenant Napoleon told them that the two carriages had come driving quickly into the fort, and the King had put his head out of the window of the first and told the sentries to close the gates, and to send the Commander of the fort to him at once at the Busby Arms, which was the chief inn in the place. Then they had driven into the courtyard of the inn, and the gates of that had been closed too.