"Of course I know," laughed Dimples, who was growing less frightened every minute; "but if you do, it will tumble down on your head as well as mine."
"That is true," said the toy captain, "but I am a real person and I am made of wood, so it will make no difference to me."
Dimples was obliged to own that there was something in what the captain said; and as she disliked nothing so much as being beaten in an argument, she at once pretended not to be listening.
"Oh, dear, how hungry I am!" she said, yawning.
"If you were real and not made up," said the toy captain, "you would never get hungry at all." However, he called out to a soldier, who was mounting guard on the top of a pillar just over his head, and ordered him to bring the prisoner some food. In a few minutes, Dimples found herself in front of a curious meal, served on round cardboard dishes and consisting of one red jelly, two raw mutton chops, a bunch of grapes, and a slice of salmon.
"But they won't come off the dishes, will they?" asked Dimples, who had fed her dolls for years on the very things that were now placed before her.
"Of course not," said the toy captain. "They would have been lost long ago if they had not been stuck on. What more can you want? If you were a real person, as you pretend to be, your appetite would be taken away by the mere sight of dishes like those!"
This, in fact, was what had already happened to Dimples, for there was nothing very enticing about a jelly from which she remembered sucking the paint only a week ago; while as for the other things, even her youngest and favourite doll was beginning to grow tired of their monotony. So she made no objection when the captain ordered the dishes to be removed.
"Now you have satisfied your hunger," continued the captain, "I will order you to be taken upstairs to the dungeon."
"Upstairs!" exclaimed Dimples. "What a funny place for a dungeon!"