"Charming," answered she.
Addison gave me a punch under the table, as if to say, "Now they are giving us the laugh."
"And I'm sure we're much obliged for them," the Old Squire continued.
"Indeed, we are obliged," said Gram.
Their remarks seemed to me a little odd, but I didn't look up.
Not another word was spoken at the table, but afterwards Addison and Ellen and I got together in the garden and mutually agreed that we had been badly beaten at our own game.
"They are too old and long-headed for us to meddle with," said Addison. "I cannot even imagine how they did it. I guess we had better let their hoards alone in the future." None the less we could not help thinking that there had been something a little queer about our defeat.
It was nearly two years later before the truth about that night's frolic came to light. Theodora did it. She could not bear to have the old folks beaten and humiliated by us, for whom they were doing so much. After we had robbed their hoarding-places, she sallied forth again and took all of our shares as well as her own, and then having replenished the looted hoarding-places, she filled the two nappy dishes from her own hoard and set them beside their plates.
The best part of the joke was that the Old Squire and Gram never knew that they had been robbed, and thought only that we had made them a present of some excellent apples. When Theodora saw how chagrined the rest of us were, she kept the whole matter a secret.