A white marble rolled over the rug and knocked a corporal and two privates flat. Quick as a flash the other side fired, and a black marble bowled over three of the enemy.
Between firing, the drum, tied round the Teddy Bear’s neck for the sake of convenience, was heard in a lively tattoo.
“That’s the signals,” announced Sunny Boy to the hobby horse that, as Daddy often said, “looked as though he smelled gunpowder.” “Three beats means to advance. That’s the way they did when Grandpa went to war.”
“Bang!” another enemy went down, carried away by a green glass marble.
“I wish Nelson was here,” said Sunny Boy earnestly. “Two sides could fire at once then.”
Still, he managed to have a pretty good time without Nelson, and when Daddy called him down to supper he put the soldiers back in their box reluctantly.
“Which side won?” smiled Mrs. Horton at the table.
“Well, you see,” explained Sunny Boy carefully, “neither really won, Mother.”
“I thought one side always won,” said Mother humbly.
“My, no!” Sunny assured her. “When Daddy called me there were ever so many soldiers alive yet. The am—am—”