“And you won’t put coals in my panniers or unglue my feet from my green grass-plot because I look more natural without wheels?”
“I give you my word,” said Fabian, “I wouldn’t think of such a thing.”
“Very well,” said the Mouse, “then I will tell you. It is a great secret, but there is only one way to get out of this kind of town. You—I hardly know how to explain—you—you just walk out of the gate, you know.”
“Dear me,” said Rosamund; “I never thought of that!”
So they all went to the gate of the town and walked out, and there they were in the library again. But when they looked out of the window the All-Wool Mausoleum was still to be seen, and the terrible blue soldiers.
“What are we to do now?” asked Rosamund; but the clockwork mouse and the donkey with panniers were their proper size again now (or else the children had got bigger. It is no use asking me which, for I do not know), and so of course they could not speak.
“We must walk out of this town as we did out of the other,” said Fabian.
“Yes,” Rosamund said; “only this town if full of blue soldiers and I am afraid of them. Don’t you think it would do if we ran out?”
So out they ran and down the steps that were made of the “Spectator” and the “Rambler” and the “Tatler” and the “Observer.” And directly they stood on the brown library carpet they ran to the window and looked out, and they saw—instead of the building with Windsor Castle and Rebecca’s head in it, and the All-Wool Mausoleum—they saw their own road with the trees without any leaves and the man was just going along lighting the lamps with the stick that the gas-light pops out of, like a bird, to roost in the glass cage at the top of the lamp-post. So they knew that they were safe at home again.