The Red King shook his head. "Suppose the man was an enemy, and too proud to ask a favor? All's fair in war, my boy. Everybody knows that."
"Then war is all wrong, as we always said," Harold replied. "Right is right, and wrong is wrong. Stealing is stealing, and meanness is meanness,--war or no war. If war makes men think differently from the rule of every day, there is nothing to be said for it. Hello!" Harold interrupted himself, for something else had suddenly caught his eye.
He had been making his way toward the pile of pie-plates, and now he stooped and picked up something lying on the grass beside them. It was a queer, old-fashioned bonnet. As he touched it out fell a rolled-up calico apron. One of the strings was gone. Harold's eyes leaped from it to the Red King's bundled-up wrist. The other apron-string was doing duty as a bandage there.
"Ho! Ho!" cried Harold, staring at the Red King's purpling face. "This is the old woman's bonnet, and her apron. A disguise! I begin to see! You, Your Majesty,--you were the old woman yourself!"
"You are very sharp, youngster!" said Red Rex sulkily. "Begone to your home and leave me to finish my work."
"If I go," said Harold slowly, "I shall tell the whole town what I have discovered. The news will travel through the Five Kingdoms--how a King disguised as an old woman stole six pies--"
"Hold!" cried Red Rex sternly. "Enough of this impertinence! Remember to whom you speak, boy! I am a King."
"Yes, you are that King. But I thought always it was the 'Knave of Hearts who stole the tarts,' not the King. How did Your Majesty manage to do it?" asked Harold curiously.
"Aha!" The Red King tried to appear easy and unconscious. "It is my turn now to tell a story, is it? Oho! You want to hear how the old woman got into your careless town, do you? And how she went along your unguarded streets, do you? And how she crept into your unbolted cottage, do you? And how she found the goodly row of pies sitting on the pantry shelf? Ah! I shall never look upon their like again!"
"Nor I," said Harold promptly. "And one was yours, Your Majesty."