Then up came the yoke of white oxen drawing the cart bearing the prize.
And the Lord Mayor gave a goad into Rafe"s hands, with words of congratulation.
"Now, mount and come with me," said the King.
But Rafe hesitated.
"Your Majesty," he replied, "I see no way to make another pie like this which has pleased you. For I have no more of the magic nuts wherewith to flavor a second."
The King frowned. "What! No more pie! Is this to be the first and the last? Sirrah, I am not pleased!"
Then little Meg stepped forth. "The magic nut is the nutmeg," said she.
"My name is Meg, and Granny called the magic nuts after me. I know where is hidden a store of them. These are my dower."
She emptied her pockets of the nuts which they held, and they were a precious handful.
"Ha!" cried the King eagerly, "you must marry Baron Applepy, that he may use your dower in our behalf."
Rafe and the maid looked sidewise at one another.
"You are willing, my dear?" said the Queen, smiling upon Meg.
"Yes," whispered she, with red-apple cheeks.
"Yes, indeed!" cried Rafe when the Queen looked at him.
But again he seemed troubled.
"Your Majesty," he said, "I cannot leave my poor neighbors. There will be no one to cook for them at my prices."
"You shall have your own price from me," said the King.
Rafe bowed low. "You do me great honor," he said humbly. "But I cannot leave my poor people, my house and my cow and my apple tree; indeed, I cannot."
The King looked very angry and raised his staff with a gesture of wrath.
But the Queen laid her hand upon his arm.
"Why may he not live where he will and yet cook the pies for us?" she said. "A messenger on a fleet horse can bring them to us every day. We shall then have pies like that first delicious one, made of fresh apples from that very same red-apple tree of his. They would be best of all."
"True," said the King, reflecting for a moment.
"Please, Your Majesty!" said Meg, in her most winsome tones. "I do so long to help Rafe pick the red apples for your pies and skim the yellow cream of the little red cow. And please, I do so long to help him cook for his poor neighbors, who will miss him sadly if he goes. Now that we have the prize, we can do much for them. Please, Your Majesty!"
"Please, Your Majesty!" echoed Rafe.
"Please, Your Majesty!" begged the Queen.
So the King hemmed and hawed and yielded. "But see, Baron Applepy," he said, "that you make me three fine pies every day, for which my swiftest messenger shall call. Now, farewell to you--and to all! We must be off.
It is past dinner-time."
"Heaven bless Your Majesties," said Rafe and Meg, bowing and curtsying low.
Then Rafe lifted the little maid into the white cart beside the hundred sacks of flour and the bag of silver, and amid shouts and cheers away they drove the white oxen toward the little house on the acre of land under the red-apple tree, where the little red cow was waiting for them.
And there they lived happily ever after, making three pies a day for the King at an enormous price, and feeding the beloved poor people, their neighbors, for no price at all.
XVII: THE MYSTERY OF THE PIE
Red Rex greeted the close of this story with an enormous sigh. "Three of those delicious pies every day!" said he. "Would I had a messenger to bring such to me!"
"It might be arranged, Your Majesty," suggested Harold, "if our two countries were at peace. I know that my mother would be glad to make such pies for you, even as Rafe and his Margot did for the King of old.
The distance from Kisington to your Capitol is not so very great, I think; and doubtless Your Majesty has messengers fleeter than the one of long ago."
"And your mother"s pies are quite as good!" exclaimed Red Rex. "I have never tasted better. So fat, so juicy, so generous! The tops fine, rounded hills; the crust so crisp, which your knife crunches daintily; the sight and smell of them is tempting!" The Red King"s eyes rolled in his head and he swayed ecstatically, like a poet composing a rhyme.
"And yet you have seen but a wee wedge of one pie!" exclaimed Harold.
"It must have pleased Your Majesty, indeed, to make your impression so true."
Red Rex eyed him strangely. "H"m, yes," he said. "I have a vivid imagination in such matters. I can almost fancy I have eaten a whole pie--two--three--four whole pies! What a feast!"
Harold"s eyes had been straying toward something white concealed in the gra.s.s not far from the Red King"s seat. He took a step forward now, bending low. Then he uttered an exclamation.
"Five pies, Your Majesty!" he cried, looking straight at the King.
"There were six, which the old woman stole. Here are five empty pie-plates!"
"What a strange coincidence!" cried the Red King, flushing and twiddling at his sword-hilt uneasily. "These coincidences do happen quite startlingly sometimes. Ha-hum!" He coughed and frowned forbiddingly.
"Surely, none of your men could have stolen my mother"s pies (and, indeed, one of them was yours), Your Majesty. They would not have been so mean!"
"They would not have been so reckless," corrected Red Rex. "No, no! it took courage to make such an attempt; great courage, my boy!"
"Courage!" cried Harold. "I call it something else,--to steal the pies of a poor widow and deprive her son of his desserts. I call it mean and disgraceful!"
"Tut, tut, boy! You do not know what you are saying!" bl.u.s.tered the War-Lord, growing very red.
"Often it takes courage to do what others call an ill deed. And an ill deed is ill, only as you look at it; so I say! Everything depends upon the point of view; remember that. Suppose the man who stole those pies was starving and needed them for his comfort?"
"Suppose, indeed!" retorted Harold. "Suppose he came to our front door and asked my mother for them, like a gentleman? She would not have refused to sell, if he had money. She would have given, if he had none.
She is like that, is my good mother!"
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. h.e.l.lo!" 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 gra.s.s beside them. It was a queer, old-fashioned bonnet. As he touched it out fell a rolled-up calico ap.r.o.n. One of the strings was gone. Harold"s eyes leaped from it to the Red King"s bundled-up wrist. The other ap.r.o.n-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 ap.r.o.n. A disguise! I begin to see!
You, Your Majesty,--you were the old woman yourself!"