Then, all of a sudden, the cook, as she went to the pantry to get some flour, stopped near the barrel of sugar. She heard a queer little sound coming from it.
“I declare!” exclaimed the cook, “a mouse is trying to gnaw into the sugar barrel! The idea!”
The sound the cook heard was the Captain’s tin sword as he cut steps in the side of the barrel, so he might climb up. But this noise sounded exactly like the gnawing of a mouse.
“Get away from there!” cried the cook, and she quickly lifted the cover off the sugar barrel, letting in a flood of light, for it was now night and the electric lights were glowing. “Get out!” cried the cook, thinking to scare away the mouse, as she thought it was.
Now of course as soon as the sugar barrel was opened, and the moment the cook looked in, the Captain had to stop work. Back into its scabbard went his sword, and he settled down among the grains of sugar again. He was now being looked at by human eyes, and it was against the toy rule for him to move.
“Well I do declare!” cried the cook, as she glanced at the Bold Tin Soldier lying in the sugar. “Here is Arnold’s Captain he has been looking for. He is in the kitchen, after all, but how did he get in this barrel? And where is the mouse that was gnawing?”
Of course there was no mouse–it was the Captain’s sword making the noise. But the cook did not know that.
She leaned down and picked the Captain up in her fingers. So he got out of the sugar barrel after all, you see, without having to cut a ladder in the wood.
“Arnold! Arnold!” called Susan up the back stairs. “I have found your Tin Captain!”
“Where was he?” asked the little boy, who was playing with the other soldiers, and wishing he had their commander.