That’s purely a grownup question.

But the little fireman, trudging up hill from Woodson dormitory at Catawba College, his backpack bulging with enough loot to feed all the kids at Nazareth Children’s Home for a couple of years, knows the only appropriate answer.

“Eat it,” he says.

And he will, no doubt gorging his way through a Halloween weekend that started last Saturday and will go on until his last wrapper hits the wastebasket, offering a brew as potent as any witch’s concoction of black cats and spider’s webs and glowing pumpkin heads with a recipe guaranteed to please.

Who likes candy as much as kids? And dressing up?

College kids, of course, who are not so grown up yet that they won’t jump at a chance to concoct a costume. And wear it.

Stir them together with the heart tug that comes naturally with kids who live in a children’s home, a woman who loves to sew, a campus on a beautiful autumn afternoon and abracadabra! the magic’s there before the moon comes up.

Truth is, for the Nazareth Children’s Home, Halloween started weeks ago when its patron saint and surrogate mother, Anne Ketner, opened her sewing machine and began whipping up this year’s costumes for “her” children, same as she stitches their draperies and bedspreads and whatever else they need or want and makes the cookies and cupcakes they like best to eat.

Want is always a big part of Halloween costumes.

You want to be a fireman with a pack on your back?

An angel?

A dead bride?

They wished and costumes were ready for all 44 children, staff members and Anne herself and husband, Ralph, cofounder of Food Lion, who all had a dressed-up fun time at the annual Halloween party at the home last Saturday night.

But the costumes weren’t ready to be put away before Halloween.

So about half the children — the smallest, of course, and a few middle-aged kids — pulled them out and put them on again for their annual trick- or-treat visit to Catawba College, a relative of a sort since both the home and the college are affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

At Catawba, says Donna McGalliard, director of housing and residence life, “it’s college students wanting to do something for those who don’t come from a home environment, to make sure they have the same fun as those who’re taken treat-or-treating by their parents.”

A couple of years ago, the resident assistants, who are all students, were talking about a senior project in the fall. Maybe a Thanksgiving dinner? Or a visit to nursing homes? Or bringing the Nazareth children to campus?

Their choice was easy.

“And this is what evolved,” says McGalliard.

“They do a lot for us,” adds Linda Benge, Nazareth’s director of public relations, who’s just finished making arrangements for the children to attend a Catawba football game on Nov. 6, which will be followed by dinner prepared by the team.

But on this beautiful late afternoon, it’s pure Halloween and its eternal battle cry.

“Trick or treat!” the ghosts and goblins shout as they make their way through the halls of Hollifield and Stanback and Woodson dorms.

And the college students, who’ve turned themselves into a welcoming array of witches and black cats and Scares and Shrieks and decorated their doors and their rooms and themselves with an enthusiastic blend of blood and bones and spider webs interlaced with witches hats and tombstones and jack-o’-lanterns, are ready with a vast array of buckets and baskets of candy.

In Stanback dorm it’s offered by Emily Cline of Cross Creek, Pa., and Katherine Browning of Fredericksburg, Va. They’re Civil War re-enactors who want to take advantage of Halloween to wear their hoop skirts and pantaloons.

“I live on a farm,” says Emily, “so we don’t have trick and treating.”

And this is a wonderful treat for her and the resident assistants, all in full costume, playing follow the leader through the dorms with the children in full costume. Rashad Smith is Death, in all black, and Kevin Hart, the Scream of movie notoriety, and Jessica Schaub, a Renaissance lady, and Jasika Pruitt, a ladybug, and Amy Stran, a fisherman. Everybody is something they aren’t usually.

Even the football player who pops out of the shower room into, oh my goodness! cobwebs and giant spiders and blood and children!

He tightens the towel around his middle and weaves through the ghosts and Ninjas and Indian chiefs and whispers hoarsely: