After being called "Sir" Miles, Hendon has to force back a smile because he still is amused at what he considers to be his young friend's gentle madness in pretending to be Prince of Wales. But as far as a title is concerned, Hendon thinks: "An empty and foolish title is mine, and yet it is something to have deserved it, for I think it is more honor to be held worthy to be a spectre-knight in his Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of the real kingdoms of this world."
As a constable comes to take them away, and as the prince is about to resist, Hendon, playing along with the prince's "madness," reminds the prince that the laws are, after all, his laws: "your laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty; shall their source resist them, yet require the branches to respect them? Apparently, one of these laws has been broken; when the king is on his throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was seemingly a private person he loyally sunk the king in the citizen and submitted to its authority?" The prince agrees with Hendon that even the king himself should obey the king's laws. This is great wisdom for a young boy to consider and agree to.
