Note A — Chapter XXIII · THE LAST.
Reading edition
It may here be explained for the benefit of the Souther that cake in the phraseology of old Scotland meant oat cake, in distinction from the greater luxury of “loaf-bread:” so that the little princess who suggested that the poor people who had no bread might eat cake, might have been a reasonable and wise Scot, instead of the silly little person we have all taken her to be.