"What is that girl doing in my palace?" asked the King, frowning.
"Please your Majesty, it is your Majesty's prisoner," answered the captain,—"she is waiting for your Majesty to decide on her punishment."
"What has the prisoner done?" asked the King in as dignified a manner as he could assume, considering that he stood on a tottering brick at the edge of the abyss in which the captain and his prisoner awaited him.
"Please your Majesty, she was heard to say that your Majesty's army was not a real army, and that I, your Majesty,—I was nothing but a toy soldier!" said the captain; and he again shook with anger from head to foot, which, after all, was the only way he could shake, because he was made all in one piece.
"Send the prisoner here," commanded the King. "It is not safe to keep a prisoner on the bottom brick—especially when she is a girl."
So Dimples, wishing from the bottom of her heart that the little playfellow she had teased had not been suddenly changed into a king, clambered up again into the hall.
"Prince Picotee," she said in an anxious undertone, as soon as she was near him, "I do think it is a real palace now, I do really!"
"Why, it's only Dimples!" exclaimed the King, and he nearly tumbled off the edge of the floor in his surprise. Then he remembered that he was a king, and tried to become dignified again, which, of course, was exceedingly difficult now that the Prime Minister's daughter was there to see. As for Dimples, she had not played with the Prince all her life for nothing, and she quite ceased to be frightened of him as soon as she came face to face with him.
"If you let that nasty captain punish me, I'll tell them all you are only a little boy and not a king at all," she whispered; and her round little face twinkled with merriment.