The Amazing Inheritance

Produced by Annie R. McGuire. This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print archive.

The Amazing Inheritance

Frances R. Sterrett

By FRANCES R. STERRETT

THE AMAZING INHERITANCE THESE YOUNG REBELS NANCY GOES TO TOWN REBECCA'S PROMISE JIMMIE THE SIXTH WILLIAM AND WILLIAMINA MARY ROSE OF MIFFLIN UP THE ROAD WITH SALLIE THE JAM GIRL

The Amazing Inheritance

By Frances R. Sterrett

AUTHOR OF "THESE YOUNG REBELS," "MARY ROSE OF MIFFLIN," "NANCY GOES TO TOWN," "THE JAM GIRL," ETC.

[Illustration]

D. Appleton And Company New York :: 1922 :: London

Copyright, 1922, By D. Appleton And Company

To The New Member Of Our Family Miriam Confer Mitchell

I

Tessie Gilfooly was a queen.

A queen! Just imagine! It was far more unbelievable to Tessie than it can possibly be to you. She stared at the man who had brought her the amazing news. A queen!

A minute before and Tessie had been only a big-eyed, dreamy salesgirl in the hardware department of Waloo's largest department store, the Evergreen. Mr. Walker, the long, thin head of the department, had just reprimanded her severely because she had given a customer an aluminum saucepan when the customer had asked for an aluminum frying-pan.

"You must pay more attention to what customers ask for, Miss Gilfooly," scowled Mr. Walker.

"She asked for a saucepan," insisted Tessie stubbornly. Tessie was tired of being blamed for the mistakes of other people.

"Well, she wanted a frying-pan," Mr. Walker said, and his tone was short and crisp, like the best pastry. "In the Evergreen, Miss Gilfooly, a customer is to get what she wants. And the customer is always right! We have to make that rule so we'll keep our customers. Don't let this happen again!"

As he walked away two big tears gathered in Miss Gilfooly's blue eyes. The injustice of the world and especially of long, thin Mr. Walker, who would stand by an unreasonable customer instead of by a tired salesgirl, made her sick.

And now she was a queen!

It does sound unbelievable. But after all you need not lift your black or your brown or your yellow eyebrows and say it is impossible. Far more impossible stories appear in your newspaper every day. Just this morning there was a tale of a set of china, one hundred and ten pieces, which was stolen from a residence on the River Drive and carried across the Mississippi River into Wisconsin and returned to its owner without one of the hundred and ten pieces being broken or even nicked. To prove this surprising story there were statements from Mrs. Joshua Cabot, who had been robbed, and from Stuttering Jimmie, the robber, who had showed that he was a quick and expert packer. Without the statement of Mrs. Joshua Cabot, easily the leader of the Waloo younger matrons, you never would have believed the tale, but no one could question the word of young Mrs. Joshua Cabot. Whoever made the phrase that truth is stranger than fiction knew exactly what he was talking about for nothing could have been stranger than for a burglar to steal a full set of Wedgewood china or for Tessie Gilfooly to find herself a queen with a real kingdom and some thousands of real subjects.

Only that morning Tessie had grumbled and twisted her face into a most unbecoming scowl because life for her was just a dreary, weary round of work. She found fault with her oatmeal and skim milk because they were not strawberries and thick yellow cream and was just as annoying and disagreeable as a discontented girl of nineteen could possibly be.

"I never have any fun!" she wailed, and her small brother Johnny, who was eating his oatmeal and skim milk as if they were strawberries and cream, looked at her in surprise. What was the matter with old Tessie this morning, anyway? "I never have anything!" went on Tessie passionately. "It isn't fair for some girls to have so much and for me to have nothing at all! Look at Ethel Kingley!" she told Granny fiercely, although she must have known that Granny's eyes, keen as they were, could never penetrate the hundreds of frame and brick and stucco houses which separated the shabby little Gilfooly cottage from the big brick and stucco mansion which housed the Kingleys. "Ethel Kingley has everything in the world, and I haven't anything at all! It isn't fair! It isn't fair! Ethel Kingley's shoes cost more than I earn in a week. She has a new dress every day and I've worn this cheap sateen rag all spring! Ethel Kingley goes to bridge parties and dances! You can read about them in the _Gazette_! And I only go to bed! Ethel Kingley's brother--" The color rushed into her pale face as she spoke of the lordly Bill Kingley, "is the most wonderful man!" Words failed her as she thought of Ethel Kingley's wonderful brother.

"I'm a Boy Scout!" interrupted Johnny, eager to remind her that her own brother, young as he was, was wonderful too.

Tessie sniffed at him and at all Boy Scouts and went on with her grievances. When a quart measure is full it must overflow if anything more is poured into it, and Tessie was just full of grievances. "And Ethel Kingley has heaps of men friends to take her out and give her a good time!"

"You've got Joe," reminded Granny. "A face is a better guide to what a man is than clothes, Tessie Gilfooly! You take my word for it. Joe Cary is one in a thousand. His money's ready the minute it's due, every Saturday night as regular as the clock." For Joe had occupied the front room of the shabby little cottage ever since he had returned from France. "Now look here, my girl!" She regarded Tessie over her spectacles with kind but firm eyes. "It's plain to be seen that you got out of the wrong side of bed this morning. You're old enough to know that there are two kinds of folks in the world, those who have and those who haven't. The good Lord thought best to put you in with the 'haven'ts' and if he didn't give you the brains to climb up to the 'haves' there isn't any use in complaining and fault-finding to me. Here you are, young and healthy and with a nice job at the Evergreen----"

"Selling aluminum!" interrupted Tessie passionately.

"Selling aluminum," Granny repeated firmly. "You know very well that you're a lucky girl to have me and Johnny to look after you and Joe Cary for a friend to take you to the movies and----"

"One movie in two weeks!" exclaimed Tessie indignantly.

"And one more than you deserve when you act like this! You've done enough complaining for one morning, my girl. And if you don't want to be late and have your pay docked you'll take that frown off your face and put on a smile with your hat and run along. And I'll have some nice liver and onions for dinner so you'll have something pleasant to look forward to all day."

A glance at the old clock ticking so patiently on the shelf proved to Tessie that Granny told the truth. She pushed back her chair and rose to her feet, a pathetic, shabby little person with her white face in which the purple shadows made her eyes look big and purple-blue. Her yellow hair was bunched over her ears in the ugly fashion of the day and was really responsible for her tirade, for it had proved unmanageable that morning and almost refused to bunch itself over her little ears. And you know how irritating it is when your hair is unmanageable.

"Granny," she began, and her lip quivered. She was an honest little soul, and she could not go away and leave Granny without some word of apology. "It isn't because I don't appreciate you and all you do for me but it's--it's--" She stopped and looked at Granny with eyes drowned in tears.

"I know," exclaimed Granny comfortingly, and she slipped her arm around the slim figure. "I know! I don't blame you a mite! It isn't fair for good little things like you to have to go without fun and pretties. Every girl has a right to be a queen for a while, and it's remembering the days when she was queening it that help to make the other days bearable. Yes, my lamb, old Granny understands, and she don't blame you a mite. But just you wait! The good Lord'll get around to the Gilfoolys some day, and then see what you'll get. You're a good little girl if you ain't that wonderful Miss Kingley!" And she hugged the good little girl and sent her away. "No, it ain't fair," she repeated as she waved her hand from the door.

"What ain't fair?" asked Johnny, who was eating Tessie's discarded oatmeal and skim milk.

"Life," Granny told him thoughtfully. "Life never seems fair to young eyes, Johnny. It's only when you're old and wear glasses that you can see maybe it isn't as bad as you thought it was."

Life seemed anything but fair to Tessie as she stood among the aluminum, smarting at the unjustness of Mr. Walker and with her eyes filled with tears. Before the tears fell on her cheeks she heard a man behind her black sateen back ask doubtfully:

"I beg your pardon, but can you tell me where I'll find Miss Teresa Gilfooly?"

Tessie flirted her hand across her eyes and swung around to stare into the smiling face of a very good-looking young man. She stopped thinking that the world was unjust and discovered that it was showing a kindly partiality to one Teresa Gilfooly when such a good-looking young man was asking for her. What could he want? The only way to hear was to ask.

"I'm Tessie Gilfooly," she said shyly and pinkly, and when Tessie was pink and shy she was adorable.

The good-looking young man seemed surprised and pleased. Perhaps he had thought that big fat Mrs. Slawson was Teresa Gilfooly. "No!" he said, as if he could not believe that she was slim little Tessie. "I've some good news for you!" And he smiled radiantly. There was some fun in carrying good news to a pretty girl. And such good news! He gave it to her all in one piece. He did not believe in breaking the good news into small portions. "You're a queen!" he exclaimed. "Queen Teresa of the Sunshine Islands!" And he grinned. It made a pleasant break in the day's work to tell a big-eyed girl that she was a queen. It turned law into melodrama--very nice melodrama.

"What--what!" stammered Tessie. She put her hand on the table behind her for support, and she looked at the messenger suspiciously. Was he making fun of her? She had studied geography, but she had never heard of any Sunshine Islands. Have you? No wonder Tessie looked at Gilbert Douglas with suspicion.

But there was no fun in Bert's face. There was pleasure and importance and satisfaction and possibly just a wee bit of envy, but there was not a bit of fun as he went on to explain that the death of Tessie's Uncle Pete had removed her from the ranks of the proletariat and elevated her to a throne. Her Uncle Pete had run away to sea when he was sixteen years old. For several years letters came to Granny with strange stamps on the upper right-hand corner of the envelopes and then communication ceased. For twenty-five years there had been no word from Uncle Pete. And he had been King of the Sunshine Islands! Now he had died and left his kingdom to the eldest child of his only brother, John Gilfooly. The oldest child of John Gilfooly was Tessie Gilfooly. A queen! With a throne and a crown and everything! Tessie's brain reeled. She felt faint.

"You come over to the office--Marvin, Phelps and Stokes," suggested Bert, who had come from the office of Marvin, Phelps and Stokes to carry the good news to Tessie and who had never had an errand he liked any better. "Mr. Marvin will tell you all about it."

"Oh, I couldn't come now," faltered Tessie, pinching herself to make sure that she was in the hardware department of the Evergreen and not dreaming in her bed. "I don't get away until half-past five."

"I guess you could get away all right," laughed Bert. But when Tessie shook her yellow head and solemnly assured him that Mr. Walker was awfully strict and never let the girls go a minute before half-past five he laughed again and said all right. He would tell Mr. Marvin that she would be over at half-past five. "Queen Teresa," he said in a voice quite full of admiration and approval, as he went away.

For some time Tessie had been conscious that Mr. Walker had been casting disapproving glances in her direction. Tessie knew--all the girls in the Evergreen had been told--that they were not to talk to their gentlemen friends during working hours. Before nine and after half-past five they could do as they pleased, but from nine until half-past five they could only talk to customers. And this man with Tessie Gilfooly had not bought so much as a dish mop. He had not even asked to see any aluminum. Mr. Walker knew. It was outrageous!

But before he could swoop down on Tessie and tell her just how outrageous it was another man approached the table on which aluminum saucepans were so attractively arranged and behind which Tessie was standing with a white face and big, unbelieving eyes. If she let go of the table Tessie knew she would fall right to the floor.

This newcomer was as strange a figure as Mr. Walker had ever seen in the basement of the Evergreen. He was short and fat and with a skin that was not brown nor yellow nor red, but an odd blending of the three colors. He wore a loose blue denim blouse and trousers which flapped about his bare feet. But it was his head which made Mr. Walker's eyes bulge, for only in the pages of the _National Geographic Magazine_, which he looked at every month in the employees' rest-room, had Mr. Walker ever seen such a head. The coarse black hair was frizzed and stiffened until it stuck straight out from the scalp and was adorned with shells. The man's nose was tattooed in red and blue and a string of shells hung around his neck. Altogether he was the strangest figure Mr. Walker had ever seen in the department, and he wondered what on earth he would buy. He looked like a foreigner of some sort. Mr. Walker was taking a course in business psychology in the Evergreen night school, and he saw the advantage of the study now as he quickly labeled the stranger a native of some foreign country.

The native walked up to Tessie and raised his hand authoritatively. "Miss Teresa Gilfooly?" he said in a lisping voice and with a strange intonation which made Tessie step back and stare at him.

She nodded. She simply could not speak.

"Queen Teresa!" murmured the native rapturously. He fell on his knees before Tessie and pressed the hem of her short skirt to his forehead. "Queen Teresa!" he boomed, and his head touched the floor beside Tessie's shabby little pumps.

If Tessie was startled you can imagine Mr. Walker's surprise. He started forward with righteous indignation. He would not have such goings-on in his department. Not for a minute! But he had to stop and adjust a matter with a customer, and when at last he reached Tessie the native was humbly backing away from her into the elevator, and Tessie was staring after him with a strange look on her face.

"Come, come, Miss Gilfooly!" snapped Mr. Walker. "I can't have this! You can't have your gentlemen friends down here! I can't have men falling on their knees before the clerks in my department!"

"What's up, Walker?"

And there stood the hero of Tessie's dreams, young Mr. Bill, the only son of old Mr. William Kingley, the owner of the Evergreen. Mr. Bill was learning the business from the ground up and so was in the basement as a floorwalker. Tessie had never seen a man like Mr. Bill, not even on the moving-picture screen. She lived in the hope that some day he would speak to her, would stop and ask, perhaps, how sales were; but never once had Mr. Bill so much as said good morning or good evening to her. He had never seemed to see her. And now he was looking--actually looking--at her! and asking Mr. Walker what was up. It was plain to everyone in the basement that _something_ was up.

Mr. Bill looked inquiringly from Mr. Walker to Tessie. Mr. Walker's face was all frowning disapproval, while Tessie's face was all flushed with unbelieving wonder. Of the two, Tessie's face was by far the more attractive. Mr. Bill looked at it again.

"Miss Gilfooly, Mr. Bill," began Mr. Walker, sure of his ground, "was breaking the rules. One of her gentlemen friends was on his knees to her not five minutes ago in this very department, beside the aluminum there!" And he pointed out the exact spot to Mr. Bill.

"He said I was a queen," faltered Tessie, eager to explain why the store rule had been shattered. She could not believe the amazing statement and so she did not speak firmly, as a queen should speak. She dared to raise her eyes to the godlike Mr. Bill--at least to Tessie Mr. Bill was godlike.

"And he was right!" declared Mr. Bill impulsively. Gee! what big blue eyes the girl had! He had never seen such eyes in the face of any girl, and he had seen many, many girls. He had never really looked at Tessie until now. She had been only one of the hundreds of black-gowned figures which filed into the Evergreen every morning, and filed out of the Evergreen every night. But now that his attention was focused on Tessie, he had to see how big and blue her eyes were, how fine her white skin was, how yellow her hair, and how slim and well poised her little body! Really, her gentleman friend was right, he thought. She was a queen. He grinned, although such a shattering of a cherished and important rule should have been met with a black frown.

"Mr. Bill!" Mr. Walker was shocked. That was no way to reprove a law-breaking employee.

"I don't mean that kind of a queen," murmured Tessie, tremulously conscious to her very toes at having Mr. Bill agree that she was a queen. "But a real queen--of the Sunshine Islands, you know! In the Pacific Ocean," she added hurriedly, for Mr. Bill had looked at Mr. Walker with a significance and a regret which were as plain as print. And she hurriedly told them of Uncle Pete who, unknown to his family, had reigned over the Sunshine Islands for almost twenty years.

"Well, I'll be darned!" exclaimed Mr. Bill. There was astonishment, amazement in his voice which made all the customers and all the salesgirls who heard it turn in his direction, and feel sorry for little Tessie Gilfooly. It sounded as if Mr. Bill just would not believe the yellow-haired salesgirl could have committed the awful deed which had been discovered.

"Upon my word!" stuttered Mr. Walker more elegantly. He did not know how to treat this situation. There was not a word in all the Evergreen rules on how to reprimand an employee if she neglected her work when she was told that she was a queen. Mr. Walker tugged at his mustache and stared stupidly at the culprit.

"Well, I'll be darned!" cried Mr. Bill again, and he too, stared at blushing Queen Teresa.

Tessie nodded. "That's the way I felt," she confessed, and again two big tears gathered in her eyes. Tessie, like long, thin Mr. Walker, felt quite unequal to the situation.

It was Mr. Bill who took command and showed that he was a true son of the Evergreen chief. "Come," he said quickly. "We must go and tell father. Can you believe it? Imagine finding a queen down here in the basement of the Evergreen! Come along!" And he took Tessie's hand and led her to the elevator.

Tessie almost swooned. But faint and excited as she was she clung to Mr. Bill's strong right hand.

"Oh, the poor girl!" murmured the customers, who watched them. "I suppose she has been impudent or stealing or something. What will they do to her? Did you say these stewpans were fifty-nine cents?"

II

Tessie had never crossed the threshold of Mr. Kingley's sacred office. She had never dreamed of crossing it, and she hung back when Mr. Bill threw open the door.

"Dad!" cried Mr. Bill, a trifle breathlessly. "Listen to this! You'll never believe it!"

There was an excitement in his voice which made his father, busy with Miss Norah Lee who was on the Evergreen publicity staff, look up from the sketches and copy they were studying. And when he saw his only son hand-in-hand with a pink-cheeked, big-eyed, bareheaded girl in a black sateen frock, he feared the worst.

"Bill!" he exclaimed harshly. He rose to his feet and glared at his only son. "How dare you?"

He changed his tone completely when he heard the story. His eyes fairly bulged as he stared at Queen Teresa who stood modestly beside Mr. Bill. For once in his life Mr. William Allison Kingley seemed at a complete loss for words. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the Evergreen, and so it was not surprising that Mr. Kingley, like Mr. Walker, was unprepared. It takes youth like Tessie's and Mr. Bill's to accept such stupendous events unquestioningly. Youth naturally believes in fairies, and if you really do believe in fairies, why--anything--everything--is possible.

"What a chance for some gorgeous publicity!" Norah Lee murmured. She had risen, too, and was staring at Tessie as if she had never seen a black-frocked salesgirl before, and as if she saw her now as so many columns of print on the front page of the _Gazette_.

An odd smile touched Mr. Kingley's mouth, and at once he was himself again. Like a well-known Queen of England, Mr. Kingley had a word engraved upon his heart--and that word was Evergreen. Mr. Kingley lived and breathed for the Evergreen. Every thought, word and deed was for the Evergreen, first and last. He went to bed at night that he might get up in the morning to work for the Evergreen. He passionately envied his son, because Mr. Bill was just beginning his career in the Evergreen, and so might naturally expect a long life of service to the big store. He admired his wife and daughter because they were clothed and nourished by the Evergreen. Just for a flash, perhaps for the only time in his life, when he saw his son and Tessie together, hand-in-hand, he had forgotten his idol; but Norah Lee's impulsive murmur pulled him down on his knees to it again.

"Of course. That's just what I was going to say!" He seemed irritated because Norah had already said it. "I heartily congratulate you, Miss Gilfooly--or should I say Queen Teresa?" He smiled benevolently at the queen as he took her hand and solemnly shook it. "You might send for the photographer, Miss Lee, and arrange to have some pictures taken of Miss Gilfooly at the aluminum--was it?--receiving the news of her--of her accession to the throne of the Sunshine Islands. It sounds quite like a romance, doesn't it? And you say you have heard nothing from your Uncle Pete--King Peter, I should say--for twenty-five years?" he asked, as Norah disappeared with a backward look of incredulous wonder at Tessie.

"No, sir." Tessie spoke softly. She had a pleasant voice, inherited from her Irish ancestors. It sounded exceedingly pleasant and musical to Mr. Kingley, and to Mr. Bill, too. "Not for twenty-five years. He ran away to sea when he was sixteen and my grandfather was awfully cross. He said he would come to no good end, but Granny said a man could make a living on the sea as well as on the land."

"And your grandmother was right!" Mr. Kingley seemed delighted that Tessie's grandmother had spoken true words. "A king! Bless me! It is romantic!" He sounded almost envious of Tessie's romance. "Do you know anything about these Sunshine Islands?" He seemed to thirst for details. "Bill, push forward that chair for Miss Gilfooly."

Tessie gave Mr. Bill a shy little smile as she sank into the big chair he pushed forward. Of all the unbelievable things which had happened, this was about the most unbelievable. Imagine sitting in Mr. Kingley's sacred office for a little chat with Mr. Kingley and Mr. Bill! Tessie's head whirled, but she managed to tell them in her soft, pleasant voice that she really knew very little about the Sunshine Islands, but that she would have to resign her position in the Evergreen, because she would have to go to her new kingdom. She spoke a little regretfully of leaving the Evergreen, and Mr. Kingley understood perfectly. He knew he would hate to leave the store even for a throne. Tessie was to see her lawyer at half-past five.

"After hours," she hastily told Mr. Kingley, so that he would know that she was not going to take advantage of her new honor and ask any favors.

"Faithful little thing," beamed Mr. Kingley. "You'll make a good queen. And you're going to the islands at once? Not alone, I hope?"

"My brother John will go with me. He's a Boy Scout!" It would have cheered Johnny's heart to have heard the pride in Tessie's voice.

"But you will need more support than a Boy Scout. The natives of those Pacific islands are cannibals!" Mr. Kingley was shocked to think that Tessie contemplated going to them without an army to aid her. "At least, I read somewhere once that they were cannibals," he said hurriedly when Mr. Bill looked at him in surprise because he _did_ know something about the Pacific islands. He flushed slightly and seemed annoyed.

"Johnny's a good Boy Scout," insisted Tessie. "And Granny will go with us, of course. And the cannibals are reformed, Mr. Kingley. Uncle Pete didn't allow them to eat anybody!"

"I should hope not! Bless me! This is strange! I never expected anything like this to happen in the Evergreen. I suppose the newspapers will give us the front page for such a story. I wonder what the Bon Ton and the Mammoth will say! The world, as well as Waloo, will be interested." He was forgetting Tessie in his delight in the situation, for, as has been said, he was the owner of the Evergreen before he was any one else. "I don't suppose, Miss Gilfooly," he said slowly, as if he were following a train of thought which was dashing through his mind, "I don't suppose you would want to hold a little sale here some day soon, after the _Gazette_ has published the story? Of aluminum, perhaps? I mean--" as his son gave a shocked exclamation, "Dad!"--"for one of the charities of the Sunshine Islands? It would help both of us. But that can be arranged later. I don't deny it would help the Evergreen as much as it would increase, say--the shoe fund of your new kingdom."

"If it would help you, Mr. Kingley, I'd be glad to do it," Tessie told him obligingly, and she glanced reprovingly at Mr. Bill, who snorted scornfully.

"Help me!" Mr. Kingley laughed and beamed at her with more satisfaction than he could put in words. "Why every woman in town would want to buy a piece of aluminum if a queen would sell it to her," he declared. "But we can talk of that later. We'll keep in touch with you--in close touch. And now, suppose you let Bill take you home or to your lawyer's?"

"I don't want to ask any favors," Tessie managed to stammer, although her heart began to thump unmanageably. Imagine Mr. Bill taking _her_ home!

"It's a pleasure to grant them." Mr. Kingley rose to his feet again and bowed to her. "After you've had your picture taken, Bill will go with you to your lawyer's. Help her all you can, Bill," he told his son. "She was one of us, you know, one of the Evergreen family, and we must help her."

"I will," promised Mr. Bill. "I'll stay right with her. Come on, Your Majesty!" He grinned at Tessie. "It sounds like a joke," he said with the frankness of a member of the family.

Tessie raised her eyes and smiled at him. "It isn't a joke," she said slowly. "If it had been a joke, that native with the funny hair and the tattooed nose would never have given me this, would he?" And she opened her left hand which she had held tightly closed, and showed them a pearl as big as a marble. It was threaded on some sort of grass or vegetable fiber and caught in a network of the same lacelike filament.

"Bless me!" exclaimed Mr. Kingley, who had never seen a pearl as large as a marble before. He touched it with his fingers to make sure that he really saw one now. "Do you suppose it is real?"

"It's real!" nodded Tessie. "And it belongs to the King, or the Queen, of the Sunshine Islands. I couldn't be the queen if I didn't have it," she told him, and her eyes were big with wonder, that she was a queen at all.

Mr. Kingley stopped looking at the pearl to look at Tessie. "Imagine giving it to you without proper authority, papers, identification, you know!" It was most unbusinesslike to his businesslike mind. He could not imagine such a procedure. When he did business he had the papers very carefully drawn up before anything passed from hand to hand. Evidently that was not the way affairs were conducted in the Sunshine Islands. "Simple people, aren't they? It must be worth a great deal of money!" He eyed the pearl with the respect one gives to what is worth a great deal of money. It reminded him of something else. "Have you any idea, my dear--I mean, Miss Gilfooly," when Mr. Kingley felt as kindly toward Tessie as he did, it was hard to keep the more informal term from his lips, "what the value of your new kingdom is?"

"The lawyer said the islands were worth hundreds of thousands," Tessie murmured bashfully.

"Dollars?" gasped Mr. Kingley, his eyes bulging again.

"Pounds," corrected Tessie, unconsciously icing the cake she offered Mr. Kingley for inspection. "That's more than dollars, isn't it? I think that's pretty good," she added with innocent pride.

"Good!" He choked over the word. "Take care of her, Bill! Take good care of her," he urged. "My soul, but this is splendid and romantic! I was always interested in romance. I never could have built up the Evergreen as I have if I hadn't been romantic. To think of finding a queen in our basement! Take good care of her, Bill!"

"I will," Mr. Bill promised again. He was far more impressed by Tessie's big blue eyes and the enchanting color in her cheeks than he was by the number of pounds she had just received. Gee, but she was a queen all right! A peach of a queen! "Come on, Miss Gilfooly, and I'll take you home." He drew a quick breath as he discovered that he wanted to have her to himself. He did not want to share her even with his father, who was beaming so benevolently.

"After the picture is taken," reminded Mr. Kingley, faithful to his motto--"Business first." "After the picture is taken. And if there is anything you want in the store, Miss Gilfooly, anything in the way of frocks or furbelows," what he really had in mind was a coronation robe but he did not put the thought in words, "just help yourself. Your credit is good with us. I'll see you again, Queen Teresa." And he laughed and took her hand and shook it. "Perhaps you would like me to put your jewel in the safe?"

"I want to show it to Granny." Tessie closed her fingers over the pearl. "She'll be interested because Uncle Pete wore it. I'll take good care of it," she promised.

"Do!" he begged, and he bowed to her again as she went away with Mr. Bill. "My soul!" he declared, as he dropped back in his chair and stared around him at the familiar furnishings which just then did not seem so familiar. "This is going to be a big thing for the Evergreen! Where's Miss Lee? We must tell the world what was found in our basement!"

As Tessie and Mr. Bill left the office they met Joe Cary coming to the office. His hands were full of drawings to be submitted to the critical eye of Mr. Kingley, who refused to let so much as a sketch of a hook-and-eye appear in any paper without his august approval. Joe stopped and stared. What was Tessie Gilfooly doing up here on the office floor with Mr. Bill, when her place was in the basement? He sensed trouble of some sort and took his stand promptly and unquestioningly beside Tessie.

"What's up, Tess?" he demanded, without any preliminary remarks.

Tessie tore her admiring eyes from Mr. Bill and looked at Joe as he stood there, his hands full of sketches, an anxious expression on his face which was half hidden by the ugly green shade that protected his eyes. Above the shade his brown hair was rough and untidy. Mr. Bill's hair was black and of lacquer smoothness. Joe's coat was old and torn. There was a darn at the upper corner of the pocket. Mr. Bill was a sartorial dream--a joy to his tailor. The contrast between Joe and Mr. Bill was so marked that it was painful. Tessie blushed for Joe. But he was her old friend, and she wanted to tell him the news herself.

"Oh, Joe!" she cried. "What do you think? I'm a queen!"

Naturally Joe would not believe such an absurd statement until Tessie had told him about the lawyer and the native with the frizzled hair, and showed him the big pearl, and even then he looked as if he did not believe it.

"It's a joke!" He glared at Mr. Bill as if he suspected that Mr. Bill were responsible for the joke, which he considered was in very bad taste.

"You remember Uncle Pete?" Tessie went on eagerly. "You've heard Granny talk about Uncle Pete?"

"She said he was lost at sea!" nodded Joe, wondering what connection there could be between Granny's vagabond son and this ridiculous statement that Tessie was a queen.

"And all the time she thought he was lost at sea, he was King of these Sunshine Islands! Can you believe it?" Tessie drew a long breath, for she could not believe it. She looked with shining eyes from the godlike Mr. Bill to the worn Joe Cary.

"No, I can't!" Joe said bluntly. "I can't believe a word of it. What do you mean about a lawyer? Wait a minute, Tessie, and I'll go with you."

"Mr. Bill is going with me," Tessie told him quickly and proudly.

Joe looked at Mr. Bill as if he were measuring him body and soul. He might not approve of the result, but he found nothing to which he had the right to object.

"Of course if you would rather have him," he said, and he turned away with his sketches.

Even if he did take her to but one movie in two weeks he was her old friend, and Tessie would not hurt him for the world. She caught his sleeve.

"He offered first," she said, still a bit overcome with the wonder that Mr. Bill had offered at all. "And his father told him to go with me. And he can go without being docked," she explained in a whisper which reached Mr. Bill's ears even if it was low. "You don't want to be docked, Joe."

"I'd rather be docked than have you get into trouble," Joe declared in anything but a whisper. "But it's all right, Tessie. Mr. Bill can look after you and perhaps he does know more about kings and queens than I do. I don't believe in such things, you know."

"I know!" But Tessie drew a long breath which told Joe that she believed in kings and queens. Indeed, she did believe in them!

"What do you mean, Cary?" demanded Mr. Bill. "Don't you believe Miss Gilfooly?"

"Oh, I believe Tessie all right. Tessie knows what I think of her. But I don't believe in kings or queens. The world doesn't need that kind of thing any more. You can see how it's getting rid of them--Russia and Austria and Germany. It may be all right," he admitted slowly, "if Tessie likes it, but personally I don't see how she can. Royalty is as old-fashioned as hoopskirts and belongs to the same period," he finished scornfully.

"You're an anarchist!" Mr. Bill was shocked, and he moved closer to Tessie as if to protect her.

"I'm a progressive!" Joe contradicted him flatly. "I move with the world, and I don't try to hold it back. But that doesn't mean I can't congratulate Tessie because she has a plaything that will amuse her until she outgrows it, although when I come to think of it, the Sunshine Islands sounds a lot like cannibals----"

"Cannibals!" Tessie was indignant. "Uncle Pete wouldn't be king of any cannibals!" The idea! How dared Joe Cary think Uncle Pete would?

"If you'll pardon me, Miss Gilfooly," broke in Mr. Bill, who disliked the tone of the conversation, and who had no patience with Joe Cary's outrageous ideas--pure envy, pure unadulterated envy, he knew was responsible for them--"we were on our way to your lawyer's when we met your friend."

"Oh, yes!" Tessie turned to him eagerly. His voice thrilled her and made her forget to be indignant at Joe. "But first we are going to the basement to be photographed, you know."

"Basement! Photographed!" exclaimed Joe, who could not find head nor tail to this amazing story of Tessie's.

"For publicity for the Evergreen!" Tessie was pinkly important. "Mr. Kingley suggested it, and I'm glad to do anything I can to help the store."

Tessie spoke with some emphasis, and she smiled radiantly. It was so thrilling to feel that she could help the Evergreen which had been so patronizing to her, although she was far too tender-hearted to have formulated that thought. She only knew that it was mighty pleasant to do something for the store. Tessie did not have an analytical mind. She took things as they came to her and did not stop to question why they came.

Joe whistled softly. "Publicity," he repeated. "Ye gods and little fishes! Publicity! The Evergreen must be served, eh? Ye gods! Run along, Tess," as she stared at him, "and have your picture taken. I expect it will make mighty good publicity for Mr. Kingley!" And he laughed in a way that puzzled Tessie and made her look at him in dismay. What on earth was the matter with Joe Cary?

III

Tessie had her picture taken standing beside the table of aluminum while customers were neglected, and Mr. Walker quite forgot to reprove the clerks, who were attentive to but one person--Queen Teresa. He stood on tiptoe himself to watch Tessie.

"We'll have a drawing made of you on a throne and wearing a crown. Joe Cary can do it," promised Norah Lee, who was revelling in this opportunity which had come to her, and which never would have been hers if the advertising manager were not in the hospital for an appendix operation, and if the assistant advertising manager were not serving on a jury. It was her chance to show what she could do, and she knew it. Her eager ears had been quick to hear the loud sharp knock which Opportunity gave at her door. She knew also that the chance would not be hers a minute after the jury was dismissed. "We'll run it in the upper corner of this picture. I think it's wonderful, Miss Gilfooly!" she told Tessie heartily. "And I'm glad the luck has come to you. It wouldn't be half as interesting if it had come to Ethel Kingley--not half! If I can help you in any way don't hesitate to send for me. Mr. Kingley would want me to help you."

"Thank you," murmured Tessie gratefully, but she did not look at Norah Lee, she looked at Mr. Bill. "Everybody's so kind," she added chokingly.

"And now I'll take you to the lawyer's!" Mr. Bill looked very handsome and big and brave as he said what he would do. Tessie fairly shivered with ecstasy. "Come on, Miss Gilfooly!"

Tessie glanced back to smile and wave her hand at the clerks, who were so bewildered and amazed that they seemed to have forgotten the price of the most ordinary tinware. Even Mr. Walker stood with his eyes and mouth wide open. They were all deeply and darkly green. "Such luck!" they exclaimed, and they did not see why their uncles could not have died and made them queens of Pacific islands. Why should little Tessie Gilfooly be the one to have all the luck?

That same question was puzzling Tessie as Mr. Bill helped her into his car and took the place beside her.

"All set?" He smiled at her. "Let's go!"

This was almost more disturbing and amazing than to know that she was a queen. To think that at last, after regarding Mr. Bill as the most wonderful and unapproachable man in the world--for Tessie realized that a great gulf yawns between salesgirls and the sons of proprietors--to think that she should actually be riding up the avenue with him in his own car. She could not believe it, but she could like it. She gave a faint little murmur of content, like the purr of a happy kitten. Mr. Bill heard her and looked down.

"Great, isn't it?" he exclaimed with hearty admiration.

It was so very great that Tessie could only nod, and the tears came to her eyes, and the beating of her heart almost choked her. She did not want to go to her lawyer's, she wanted to ride on forever with Mr. Bill. She would far rather ride with Mr. Bill than hear about her kingdom.

The distance from the Evergreen to the office of Marvin, Phelps & Stokes was not long, but Mr. Bill had to make it longer before he found a decent parking place.

"If the cops knew who you were they'd let us stop anywhere," he grinned. "But they don't know, and we don't want any argument."

"Oh, no!" Tessie was congenitally opposed to anything unpleasant.

"Shall I wait for you, or do you want me to come up with you?" The question was only a form, for Mr. Bill would have been cut in inch-pieces before he would wait in the car while Tessie was with her lawyer, hearing about her inheritance. Mr. Bill chuckled. This was vastly more amusing than snooping around the Evergreen basement directing customers and finding fault with clerks.

"Please come with me," begged Tessie. "I want you. I--I feel so alone. Do come along."

"You bet I'll come!" exclaimed Mr. Bill, and he led her into the big office building and into the elevator, which whizzed them to a floor which had the name Marvin, Phelps & Stokes all over it. "Lord, what would the people in this elevator say if they knew you were a queen!" he whispered, just before they left the cage, and Tessie laughed and blushed and said "My goodness!" It was so wonderful to have Mr. Bill whisper in her ear that it was not strange that she could only think in breathless exclamations.

The young man who had brought Tessie the good news jumped up as they came in, and he scowled at Mr. Bill before he even smiled at Tessie.

"I'll tell Mr. Marvin you are here," he said to Tessie. "What do you want, Bill?" he demanded very ungraciously of Mr. Bill.

"Hello, Bert!" Mr. Bill was most affable. "This is great news you brought to the Evergreen. Dad and I want to help Miss Gilfooly in every way we can, so I came along with her."

"I guess when she has Marvin, Phelps & Stokes to help her she won't need any Evergreens," sniffed Bert rudely. "Come right in, Miss Gilfooly!" He pointedly refrained from offering Mr. Bill an invitation.

But Tessie would not have him left out. "Will you come with me?" she begged prettily. "Of course I know there isn't a thing to be afraid of, but I do feel funny." Her voice quivered.

It brought Mr. Bill to her side at once. He looked triumphantly at Bert, who sniffed again as he led them to the room of the senior partner of the most important law firm in Waloo--in the Northwest.

"Miss Gilfooly!" Mr. Marvin rose to his feet and took her hand. "It was very pleasant for us to send such good news to you," he smiled. "There isn't the shadow of a doubt that you inherit your uncle's property. He left it to the eldest child of his brother John, and we know that you are John Gilfooly's eldest child. But we must comply with the formalities and make everything legal. Undoubtedly you can let us have the record of your birth, and the record of the marriage of your father and mother?"

"Why!--why!--" faltered Tessie, who had no idea where she would find such records. And without them she might only be Tessie Gilfooly of the aluminum again. And Mr. Bill! Oh, it was cruel!

"If you haven't them you can easily get them," went on Mr. Marvin. He did not seem at all worried because Tessie did not have the necessary records in her pocket. "One of our men--Mr. Douglas, perhaps--can take you to the court house."

"I'll take her!" Mr. Bill offered eagerly.

"Where such records are kept," finished Mr. Marvin as if Mr. Bill had never said a word. It was outrageous the way he ignored Mr. Bill. Tessie looked at him indignantly. Didn't he know who Mr. Bill was? "I understand there is a little opposition to your uncle's will. A group of natives, Sons of Sunshine I believe they call themselves, want a native ruler, but you need not worry about them. The Honolulu lawyer, who brought us your uncle's will, tells me that a good majority of the people have declared that they will carry out King Peter's wishes. They are sending a special representative to escort you to the islands. Of course you shouldn't go alone."

"I wouldn't!" declared Tessie hastily. "I'd take my brother--he's a Boy Scout--and Granny. The warm climate will be good for Granny's rheumatism," she added thoughtfully.

"The natives have a curious tradition according to this Honolulu lawyer," Mr. Marvin said, ignoring the Boy Scouts and Granny's rheumatism as he had ignored Mr. Bill. "It is connected with a jewel--a big pearl. They believe that it fell from Heaven, from the Eye of God, and they will never accept a ruler who cannot show them that he or she--" he smiled at Tessie--"has it. The Tear of God, they call it. Unfortunately it has disappeared, and until you have it in your possession it would not be wise----"

"Is this it?" interrupted Tessie, and she opened her hand and showed him the huge pearl caught in the lacelike fibers.

Mr. Marvin put on his glasses and looked at it. "My dear child!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get this?" He was amazed to see that the Tear of God was on Tessie's pink palm. And he listened eagerly to Tessie's story of the native who was neither black nor brown nor yellow, but an attractive mingling of all three, who had followed Mr. Douglas to the Evergreen basement and prostrated himself at her feet before he gave her the pearl--the royal jewel of the Sunshine Islands.

"That must have been Ka-kee-ta. He came with the Honolulu lawyer," explained Mr. Marvin. "He insisted on following Bert so that he could see you at once. He was King Peter's special man, I believe. And he was evidently satisfied that you were the heiress. I suppose there must be a strong family resemblance. It is quite a romance, isn't it, Miss Gilfooly? Take good care of your jewel, for the natives would never accept you as their queen if you should lose it. Perhaps you had better leave it with me? I'll put it in our vault!"

"No." Tessie spoke firmly, although it startled her to know that she had a jewel of such importance. "I must show it to Granny, and to Johnny. Johnny will guard it for me. He's a Boy Scout."

"Just as you say." But it was plain that Mr. Marvin did not share Tessie's confidence in a Boy Scout as a custodian of a royal jewel. "And the sooner we get those records the better. Bert will take you to Mifflin to-morrow. I understand your father and mother were married in Mifflin."

Mr. Bill cast an appealing glance at Tessie. He wanted her to refuse to go to Mifflin with Bert Douglas and to insist on going with him, but Tessie only smiled tremulously and murmured that her father and mother had been married in Mifflin, and she would be ready to go with Mr. Douglas any time.

"I've resigned my position at the Evergreen," she added and in her proud young voice there was a little touch of regret. The Evergreen had meant the world to Tessie, and without it she felt a bit forlorn.

IV

Granny promptly fainted when she was told that her only granddaughter was a queen. Tessie and Mr. Bill, who was still dutifully obeying his father and looking after Queen Teresa, were at their wits' end. It was Johnny the Boy Scout, who sprinkled water over his grandmother's gray face.

"I shouldn't have told you about Uncle Pete all at once," quavered Tessie, remorsefully, as Granny opened puzzled eyes. Tessie slipped an arm around her. "I should have broken the news to you gently."

Granny smiled feebly and patted Tessie's fingers. "It wasn't your Uncle Pete's death that made me go off like that," she said, her voice growing stronger with every word. "It's hearing that I've been the mother of a king for twenty years without ever knowing it. That was enough to knock the breath out of any woman. I wish your grandfather was alive to hear how right I was when I told Pete there was a good living to be found on the sea as well as on the land. I'd like to know any of Pete's old friends who stayed at home who've been kings! I'm glad Pete took my advice, though the good Lord knows he was too headstrong and stubborn to take anybody's advice but his own. And you're a queen, Tessie!" She smiled proudly at the little queen. "I sure _am_ glad for you! When I told you this morning that the good Lord would get around to the Gilfoolys some day, I never thought of anything so grand as this. And I'm glad even if it does mean I'll lose you. You'll be going over to those islands to sit on your throne and wear your crown, and I'll be thinking about you and loving you every minute!" She sat up and gazed at Tessie with a face full of affection and admiration. "I guess there won't be any queens that'll be any prettier than you'll be, when you're dressed up like one! My soul and body! Queen Teresa!" she murmured, as if she found it absolutely impossible to credit this amazing story.

Tessie gave a tremulous little laugh and caught Granny by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. "Can you believe it, Granny?" she cried, as if she could not believe it herself. "Can you believe it?"

Granny shook her head. "No," she said truthfully, "I can't!"

Tessie laughed again and kissed her with warm red lips. "Well, it's true!" she cried triumphantly. "It's true! Isn't it?" she appealed to Mr. Bill. "And I shan't stir a step without you and Johnny! Of course you'll go to the islands with me!"

Granny sighed happily. "I was hoping you'd ask me!" She smoothed the gray hair which had been loosened by Johnny's first-aid treatment and hung in wisps over her face. "I may be an old woman, but I don't like to be left out of things. I like to see new things and pretty things as much as anybody. I'd like to know what Mrs. Scanlon'll say now! She was bragging just this morning when I hung out the clothes because her Lil's a stenographer. I'd like to hear what she says when she knows you're a queen! Queen of the Sunshine Islands!" The words were sweet to her tongue and sweet to her ears. "But there's a lot to do before you're crowned, Tessie!" she declared suddenly.

"I should say there was!" But even while she was agreeing with Granny, Tessie's nose was sniffing the air. "Have you anything on the stove, Granny? I'm sure I smell something burning!" She sniffed again.

"Oh, it's my liver!" Granny flew to the kitchen to turn off the gas which was burning the liver. "I forgot all about dinner when I heard the news," she apologized. "It's lucky I hadn't put in the onions. Then we would have had a mess. Now then, Tessie, what's the first thing to do? I'll bet you have it all planned out in that clever little head of yours." She looked triumphantly at Mr. Bill as if to ask him if he had ever seen another girl with such a clever little head as Tessie's. "Say," she said suddenly, "I don't believe I got your name?" That was true, for Tessie had been so excited when she told Granny the amazing news, that she had never remembered to tell Granny who Mr. Bill was.

"He's young Mr. Kingley, Granny--Mr. Bill!" Tessie was as pink as a rose, and she looked a thousand apologies as she smiled at Mr. Bill. "His father owns the Evergreen," she explained.

"My soul and body!" gasped Granny when she understood who Mr. Bill was.

"My father told me to look after our little queen," Mr. Bill said eagerly, so that Granny might know why he was present at what some people might consider a family council.

"That's very kind of him, I'm sure." But Granny's mind was not on the Evergreen or its kind proprietor. "Tessie," she cried sharply, "that's why a dark-complexioned gentleman has been walking up and down in front of the house to-day. If he went by once, he went by a hundred times. He made me so nervous I almost went out to ask him to exercise on the other end of the block for awhile, and not wear out our sidewalk, but just then a fat man with a tow-head and a big nose came up in a purple taxicab and spoke to him, and they went away together. The dark-complexioned gentleman had rings of some kind in his ears and a yellow sash around his waist. He looked like he was a left-over from a masquerade or something. Dear, dear! It does seem like a dream, don't it? But what's the first thing we do?" She looked at Tessie for orders. Already she accepted Tessie's right to issue orders.

Tessie smiled and squeezed the work-roughened hands. "The first thing is to go to Mifflin and get a copy of father's and mother's wedding license. And the second thing is to find a record of my birth."

"Tessie!" Granny was all admiration. "What a business head you have! She'll make a fine queen, won't she, Mr. Bill? And how are you going to Mifflin?" She looked at Mr. Bill to see if he knew how Tessie was going to Mifflin.

"Mr. Douglas is going to take me in an automobile. He's one of my lawyers," Tessie explained importantly. "The old lawyer, Mr. Marvin, arranged it. I don't see why you can't go with me, Granny--and Johnny, too. It would be a nice ride."

"Sixty miles there and sixty miles back," chuckled Mr. Bill, much pleased to hear that Tessie did not care to drive one hundred and twenty miles alone with Mr. Douglas. "And the country's pretty now."

"That's fine," beamed Granny.

And Johnny the Boy Scout declared it would be fine, too. Johnny was sitting beside Tessie and staring at her with big round eyes. Just imagine having a sister who was a queen! Gee! what would the fellows say?

"Tessie, what's that you got in your pocket?" asked Granny suddenly, for her keen eyes had seen the end of something hanging from the pocket of Tessie's black sateen frock.

"The Sunshine native gave it to me." Tessie took the royal jewel, the Tear of God, from her pocket and dangled it before Granny's astonished eyes. "It's the sign I'm Queen of the Sunshine Islands. If I lose it, I lose my kingdom." She laughed softly. She had no intention of losing the royal jewel. "The people won't have a king or queen who can't show them this--the Tear of God. That's what they call it."

"Tessie! Ain't it pretty! And your Uncle Pete wore it?" She took it in her fingers and patted it as she would have patted Pete's fingers if he had been present--and in a mood to be patted. "And now you'll wear it." She wiped a tear from her eyes.

"Not until we get those records and the lawyers say it's all right. It wouldn't be honest!" declared upright Tessie.

"But the native gave it to you himself," objected Granny. She liked to see the royal jewel around Tessie's white neck.

"Oh, he thinks I'm the queen all right, or he would never have given me this, but I have to know I am before I wear it. You can keep it safe for me, Granny, until I do know."

Granny accepted the appointment of custodian of the royal jewel with pride and pleasure. "I'll put it in the baking-powder can, wrap it up in waxed paper," she said. "Nobody would think of looking in a baking-powder can. I often tuck away a quarter or a dime in one. My soul and body!" She had forgotten that Mr. Bill was not a member of the family. She didn't remember it until she had disclosed her secret hiding place, and she looked frightened. Then she glanced at him slyly and smiled triumphantly. "Maybe I won't put it in the baking-powder can after all. I've got a lot more hiding places."

"I'll bet you have!" chuckled Mr. Bill. "But I wish Miss Gilfooly would let father keep it in his safe, or Mr. Marvin take care of it. It isn't safe to have valuables in a house where there are only women."

"There's a man in this house as well as women!" The Boy Scout bristled with indignation at being ignored so completely. "I guess I'm here."

"And you're the biggest help!" Tessie hugged him.

Mr. Bill remembered that she had hugged Granny; and now she had hugged the Boy Scout. Perhaps it would be his turn next. He hoped it would.

"Granny would never have come out of her faint if it hadn't been for you," Tessie told Johnny proudly. "We just stood around like geese, didn't we?" she asked Mr. Bill.

"That was one of the first things I learned," Johnny explained with haughty scorn because they had not learned it. "Every scout has to know how."

"I expect I should go home!" exclaimed Mr. Bill suddenly, although he did not want to go home, and he said so ruefully.

"You can stay and take pot-luck with us if you want to. It's liver and onions." Granny extended the invitation with royal hospitality. "And I'll open a can of my preserved strawberries. I've been saving them for a big occasion, but I guess there won't ever be a bigger occasion than this. Even your wedding, Tessie, won't mean so much to me as your being a queen. Any girl can have a wedding, even Lil Scanlon next door, but I never knew a girl who was a queen before. You can thank your Uncle Pete for your luck. Poor Pete!" she sighed. "He never liked liver and onions," she remembered sadly. "Maybe we shouldn't have them to-night, just when we hear he's been dead six months and left Tessie a throne! Maybe we shouldn't ever eat liver and onions again now we're queens!" And she startled them all by bursting into tears.

Tessie ran to her, and tried to soothe her with loving pats and words. "She's all upset," she told Mr. Bill apologetically.

"And no wonder!" Mr. Bill was a bit upset himself at the amazing and interesting situation in which he found himself. "I tell you," he suggested, as inspiration gave him an idea, "suppose you all come down town and have dinner with me? You don't want to bother getting a dinner to-night; and Dad said I was to take care of you." He grinned at Tessie. "I can run you down in the car. Come on to the Waloo with me?"

"I ain't got a thing to wear!" But Granny stopped crying and wiped the tears from her eyes as she reviewed the contents of her closet. "I ripped the sleeves out of my best dress this very afternoon to cut 'em over more stylish."

"You're all right just as you are," Mr. Bill told her. "You look fine--neat as a pin. Just put on your hat and come along."

Granny looked at her black alpaca, which was, as Mr. Bill said, as neat as a pin, and then she turned questioning eyes to Tessie. "I could take off my apron," she said slowly, and when Tessie nodded, she caught Johnny by the shoulder. "But this young man has to wash his hands! Such fists!" She was shocked at the sight of Johnny's hands. "And your own sister a queen on a throne! It's a disgrace!" She bustled Johnny to the kitchen, although he loudly protested that he was going to wash his hands, a Scout knew enough to wash his hands when they were dirty.

"Well!" Mr. Bill drew a long breath when he was alone with Tessie. "This is a corker! An out-and-out corker!"

"It's awfully kind of you to take us to the Waloo," Tessie said softly. "Granny is too excited, and I'm too excited, to get dinner, and we don't like the cafeteria at the corner. And on our way home we could stop at the public library, couldn't we?"

"The public library!" Mr. Bill stared. Why on earth would she want to stop at the public library?

"I'd like to get some books on the Sunshine Islands," explained Tessie. "I don't know a thing about them, and I think a queen should know about her kingdom, don't you?"

"I don't think it will make the slightest difference what you know!" Mr. Bill rather lost his head as he looked into her pink face and her big blue eyes, which had such dark purple lights in them. "You'd be all right if you didn't know anything!" he stammered thickly.

"Oh, Mr. Kingley!" Tessie's pink rose of a face turned like magic into a red rose.

"Call me Bill!" he begged, and his face was red too.

Tessie almost swooned. Call her hero--her wonder man--Bill! She couldn't!

"As Dad said, we belong to the same family--the Evergreen," Mr. Bill reminded her ardently.

Put that way, Tessie managed to falter "Bill," and she glanced at him from under her long lashes. Mr. Bill gasped, and if Granny had not come in with the washed Boy Scout he would probably have been guilty of the "lesest" kind of _lese majeste_.

As they went out to Mr. Bill's car, a shadow by the lilac bushes turned into a man and slunk away, but not before Granny's sharp eyes had seen him slip down the street.

"I'd like to know what that man was doing there," she grumbled. "Tessie, you got the Tear of God in your pocket?" she asked in a hoarse whisper, and when Tessie said she had, that her fingers were holding it tight, Granny's frown changed to a self-satisfied smile. "Then I guess he's welcome to what he finds. There isn't anything worth stealing in the house now, I guess!"

"I'm glad I put on my medal!" exclaimed Johnny. "I put on all my insignia for you, Tessie." He thrust his small chest forward so that Tessie could see for herself that he had done honor to her.

"Bless the boy!" Tessie bent her head and kissed him.

Mr. Bill all but died of envy. He wished that he was a Boy Scout, and then he was glad that he wasn't. A Boy Scout might have privileges, but a man could have hopes. He was not sure what he hoped, but he knew that he admired Tessie tremendously, and that it was amazingly exciting to be on such friendly terms with a queen. It seemed impossible that only a few hours ago he had never known that there was a Tessie Gilfooly in the world. And now--why now she seemed the only girl in the world!

V

They had a delightful dinner at the Waloo. Granny gazed around the big room rather awed by the ornate display of rose velvet and gold, the crystal electroliers, and the army of waiters.

"I suppose this is what you'll have all the time in the Sunshine Islands," she said with pride. "Just think of your Uncle Pete, Tessie, sitting down to dinner every day in a room like this and to a dinner like this. I don't wonder he never came home. The good Lord has sure been kind to the Gilfoolys!"

Tessie did not eat much, and she did not talk much. She was still too dazed at what had happened. She could not believe that it was true. It couldn't be true that she was in the dining room of the Waloo Hotel, with Mr. Bill as the host of a family party--a family party of Gilfoolys! Such things never happened to poor working girls. But Mr. Bill's radiant smile and eager attention convinced her that at least he was real.

Gilbert Douglas was with a party of young people at the other end of the room. He came over to speak to Tessie, and tell her that he would call for her the next morning about ten. Mr. Bill yearned to stab him with his dinner knife. When Bert went back to his friends and told them who Tessie was, there were many curious and admiring, and almost as many envious, glances sent toward her. Altogether it was a very pleasant dinner. But Tessie would not loiter over the coffee--not even to listen to the orchestra nor to dance once with Mr. Bill.

"I'd faint," she declared. "I feel all wobbly sitting down. And I want to stop at the library. It closes at nine. And anyway it wouldn't be right to Uncle Pete. We had to have something to eat, but we don't have to dance."

Every one in the big dining room seemed to know who Tessie was when she left, and there was much craning of necks and whispering. The head waiter bowed them out with much ceremony and hoped that Tessie would come again. Tessie was pink to her little ears, and she shyly murmured that she would like to come again.

They reached the library barely in time. The librarian was just locking the door of the branch station when Mr. Bill and Tessie ran up to her. She obligingly unlocked the door and went back with them.

"The Sunshine Islands," she repeated, when she heard Tessie breathlessly explain what she wanted. "I never heard of them."

"They're in the Pacific Ocean." Tessie told her with much importance.

"We have several books that speak of the islands in the Pacific Ocean," the librarian remembered. "But why on earth do you come running in here at this time of night to ask for books on the Sunshine Islands?" And she looked from pink-cheeked Tessie to grinning Mr. Bill, as if she would not produce one of her books until that question was answered.

"Because," dimpled Tessie, who saw no reason why she should not tell--it was nothing to be ashamed of, and she felt that she had to give some reason for taking the librarian back to her library after the door had been locked for the night--"because I've just heard that I'm the Queen of the Sunshine Islands!"

"My goodness!" exclaimed the surprised librarian, and she found Tessie all the books which mentioned the islands in the Pacific Ocean. "There!" she said. "If you read all these you'll learn something about your kingdom. The best book," she remembered with a frown, "the one that tells all about the Pacific islands is out. A man came in after dinner and took it."

"What kind of a man?" asked Mr. Bill, not because he cared but because the librarian seemed to expect something to be said.

"A tall man, young and thin, with rough brown hair and brown eyes and rather shabby clothes." The librarian appeared to describe her client by looking at Mr. Bill and seeing his opposite.

"It must have been Joe Cary!" exclaimed Tessie. "It would be just like Joe to learn everything about my kingdom before I can read a word!" She looked vexed.

"Save you a lot of trouble," suggested Mr. Bill. "He can tell you what he learns, and you won't have much time for reading now."

"That's true!" Tessie stopped frowning to smile. "I'll let Joe do my reading for me. That's the way queens do, isn't it?--have some one do things for them? Thank you for the books." She turned politely to the librarian, who was staring at her with unbelieving amazement.

"My goodness! I'm much obliged to you for coming in for those books even if you never read them. I've been librarian at this branch station for three years now, and nothing as interesting as this ever happened. I hope you'll be a very happy queen!" And the librarian drew a long breath. She had never supposed that she would ever tell a queen to her face that she hoped she would be happy. Such things might happen in books, but surely they had never happened before in a real library.

"Thank you," said Tessie, putting out her hand to shake the librarian's lean fingers. "I'm going to try to be a good queen."

"My goodness!" repeated the librarian, as Tessie, Mr. Bill and the books went to join Granny and Johnny. "My goodness, but I'm glad I didn't close up a minute earlier than I did!"

There were no lights in the narrow street when Mr. Bill turned his car away from the avenue. In contrast to the brilliantly lighted thoroughfare, the street seemed darker than a pocket. The city fathers depended on the moon for illumination on certain nights designated by the almanac, and if the moon was dilatory or negligent, that was not their fault. The lights on Mr. Bill's car were all he had to show him the way, but with their aid, he found the shabby little cottage without any trouble at all.

"It's been a very pleasant evening," Granny said politely, as she stepped from the car. "I'm sure we've all enjoyed it, and we have the liver and onions for to-morrow night when we've had time to calm down a bit. Good night, Mr----" She discovered she had forgotten Mr. Bill's name. She was horrified.

"Call me Bill!" begged Mr. Bill in the friendliest way. "I'm such a friend of your granddaughter's--at least I'm going to be such a friend--we belonged to the same family, you know, the Evergreen--that I want to be a friend of yours, too."

"You've proved yourself a friend," beamed Granny. "I declare I'm that tired I'll be glad to go to bed. I'm not as young as I was, and it's a good deal of a strain for an old woman to hear all in one day that her son was a king and that her granddaughter is a queen. Come, Johnny, we'll go right to bed. Good night, Bill, and thank you kindly."

She was tired, and her step was heavy as she went along the walk and up the steps. On the narrow porch her foot touched something that gave beneath her weight. It was soft, and yet it wasn't. Granny drew back her foot, stood still and screamed. There was--yes, there was something on her nice clean porch that did not belong there!

"I'll make a light," offered the resourceful Scout.

"Not with two sticks of wood," objected Tessie, who had run to her grandmother and was staring at the black shadow on the porch floor. "It takes too long!"

"I got a match, silly!" retorted her brother. "We can use matches when we got 'em!"

But Mr. Bill had struck a match, and by its feeble light they could see that the black shadow was the body of a man, huddled on Granny's nice clean porch. Granny shrieked again.

"My soul and body!" she cried. "This is too much!" And she sat heavily down on the step. "I don't like men murdered on my front porch!" she wailed.

"Murdered!" Tessie shrieked, too.

"He isn't murdered," declared Mr. Bill, who had been bending over the body. "At least I don't think he is. Darn it!" For the match flickered and went out.

"Who--who is it?" whispered Tessie, and she trembled so that Mr. Bill had to put his arm around her. "Who is it?"

"I don't know. He looks like a black man--at least he isn't a white man. And I caught a glimpse of an earring as the match went out. We must get some light!" He looked about for some light, but the resourceful Scout had taken the key from Granny's limp fingers, thrown the door open and turned on the light in the hall. There was a white stream through the doorway, and as it fell on the dark face of the man on the porch, he moved slightly and moaned.

"Thank the good Lord he isn't dead!" Granny stumbled to her feet. "Who are you and what do you want?" she asked the stranger sharply. "I'll bet he was after that Tear of God, Tessie," she said, as the dark head moved away from her, and she, like Mr. Bill, caught a glimpse of an earring.

"Oh!" Tessie's fingers felt for the royal jewel. It was there in her pocket, and she grasped it eagerly. Just suppose she had lost it!

"I'll take him away," offered Mr. Bill. "You don't want him here. I'll take him away."

"Hello! What's up here, Mrs. Gilfooly?" And there was Officer Clancy peering at them. "What's the matter here?"

"Well, Mr. Clancy!" Granny turned eagerly around. "I'm sure glad to see you to-night. We go out for a pleasant dinner with a friend of my granddaughter, who's just learned that her Uncle Pete, my eldest, has made her Queen of the Sunshine Islands, and we come home to find this dark-complected gentleman on my nice clean front porch. I almost stepped on him." She shuddered as she recalled her sensations when she put her foot on the dark-complexioned gentleman. "I couldn't think what it was, but it was him!" And she waved her hand toward the stranger who had managed to sit up, and was staring around with dull eyes.

It was no wonder that Officer Clancy was dazed and bewildered to hear Granny talk so glibly of queens and porches, but he stooped over the stranger, who curled up like a snail.

"Now then, my man, what are you doing here, frightening the ladies out of their wits?" asked Clancy sharply.

The stranger shrank away and muttered something. The words sounded like "The Shark! The Shark!" but Granny thought that her ears must have deceived her. A shark was a fish that lived in the ocean. There were no sharks in her neighborhood.

"The shark! The shark!" was all the stranger would say that any one could understand, although he stammered a lot of words that sounded like anything but language to the little group gathered around him.

"I can't make head nor tail of what he says!" Officer Clancy exclaimed helplessly. "I'll try him again. Now then, my man, what were you doing here?"

"On my nice clean porch!" added Granny shrilly.

But the man only muttered some more of the unintelligible gibberish jumbled around the word "Shark." Officer Clancy jerked him to his feet, and he stood leaning weakly against the policeman.

"I better take him along to the station," the latter suggested. "He hasn't done any harm, has he? Maybe he was taken sick as he was passing by, and came in to get help," he suggested eagerly.

"He's got a lump as big as an egg on the back of his head," declared Mr. Bill. "Looks to me as if somebody had blackjacked him!"

"That so?" Officer Clancy looked at the head whose black thatch was unlike any hair he had ever seen before. "There is a lump there! I expect that was it, Mrs. Gilfooly. Somebody slugged him, and he crawled up on your porch and fainted. And I bet I saw the guy that did it! I passed a queer-looking chap not ten minutes ago. He was dark like this fellow, and his hair was frizzed for fair, and he was in his bare feet. He was walking fast and looking straight ahead of him. I remember I thought he was a fine figure of fun. I never saw anybody just like him."

"Could it have been Ka-kee-ta?" Tessie asked Mr. Bill in a frightened whisper. "He was in his bare feet." She shivered.

"Ka--oh, the chap Mr. Marvin spoke about. I wonder!" And Mr. Bill looked at Tessie.

Clancy's sharp ears heard their whispers. "Friend of yours?" he asked quickly.

"No, not a friend," Mr. Bill answered just as quickly. "Just a messenger of some sort. I think you're right, Officer, you better take this man away."

"I'll take him to the station until his mind clears up and he can tell us how it was. You can drive us over." He nodded to Mr. Bill.

"I would be glad to." But Mr. Bill sounded anything but glad. "Only I hate to leave Mrs. Gilfooly and Miss Gilfooly here alone."

"I guess I'm here!" shouted the insulted Boy Scout. "I guess I know what to do if anything happens!"

"There won't anything happen," promised Clancy. "It's happened. And I'll have the sergeant send a man right over to keep an eye out. I'm sure glad to hear of your luck, Miss Gilfooly." He turned to Tessie and solemnly shook her hand. "You'll make a fine queen!"

"I don't know as I want to be a queen if it means finding strange men fainting on our front porch," Tessie murmured almost tearfully.

"Perhaps I'd better stay," suggested Mr. Bill, as he saw how she trembled. "I can sit downstairs and read your books."

"You need your rest as well as we do if you're going to be any help to your pa to-morrow," objected Granny. "We'll be all right with Johnny and the man Officer Clancy sends up. You take that stranger to the station, Mr. Clancy, and lock him up tight. I'll bet he knows more than he's letting on." She peered into the dark face. "Thank the good Lord tattooed noses ain't fashionable in Waloo," she murmured. "Tessie, you ought to go to bed. There's Joe Cary!" She stopped as she heard a whistle up the street. "Joe! Joe Cary!" she called.

"Here!" answered Joe. "What's up?" he demanded as he came up the walk. "You can run along," he told Mr. Bill and Officer Clancy, when he heard the story. "I'll look after things here." When Mr. Bill had reluctantly said good night, holding Tessie's fingers until Joe took them from him, and gone away with Clancy and the stranger, Joe turned to Tessie.

"You'd better go to bed, Tess. You must be all tired out!"

"She is!" Granny answered for her. "We're all tired. I declare it does take it out of a body to have such wonderful things happen. Can you believe it, Joe? We had a nice dinner at the Waloo," she said, following him into the house. "And that Mr. Bill is a real pleasant young fellow. My soul and body!" she exclaimed, staring around in amazement, for the house which she had left as neat as wax was now in disorder. Drawers had been pulled out and their contents dumped on the floor, closets emptied in a way that startled and angered Granny. "Somebody's been here, Joe! Somebody has been all over this house!" She stared at Joe. "I expect they came to get that jewel of yours, Tessie," she guessed loudly. "That Tear of God! Thank goodness I didn't put it in the baking-powder can. Thank goodness you got it in your pocket! Well, this is too much!"

"There, there, Granny!" soothed Joe. "They didn't get anything. You trot up to bed, and Tess and I'll straighten things out."

It took some time before Granny could be persuaded to leave them and more time before the drawers were pushed into place and doors shut on the disordered closets. Joe looked at Tessie. Her face was milk-white and her eyes were heavy and tired.

"Well, Tess!" He put his hands on her shoulders so that she would look into his face. "What do you think about queens now? Are you still glad that you are such an old-fashioned, wornout thing as a queen?" He bent to peer into her eyes.

"I don't know," she faltered. She put up her hands to clasp his strong fingers. "It isn't what I thought it would be, if things like this are going to happen."

"All sorts of things happen to queens," prophesied Joe. "You have only to read the papers to know that. The world doesn't need queens any more. I'm sorry, Tessie," his hands slipped from her shoulders to her waist and he drew her to him. "I'm sorry you're one!" His voice was soft as velvet and honey-sweet.

But Tessie pushed him away. "Why, Joe Cary!" she exclaimed indignantly. "If that isn't just like you! You never want me to have any fun! You only want me to go to the Y. W. C. A. gymnasium, and to study shorthand!"

"I don't want you to be a queen!" he insisted stubbornly, his face flushed, his eyes snapping.

"Why not?" she asked defiantly, and when he did not answer her at once, she asked him again, more softly this time. "Why not, Joe Cary?"

"Because," he said, and he folded his arms across his chest and looked at her scornfully, "queens always think they are a darned sight better than other people. I'm one of the other people, but you needn't think you are any better than I am, Tessie Gilfooly, even if you are queen of a lot of cannibals. Queen!" He had nothing but hot scorn for the word.

She turned away from him impatiently. "You never want me to do anything but work," she pouted. "The idea of talking to me like that, as if a queen wasn't any more than a scrubwoman. I shan't listen to you another minute. I'm going to bed. But before I go, I'll tell you one thing, Joe Cary: if I had heard you were a king, I wouldn't have been so nasty. I would have been proud and glad for you!"

"Tessie!" he cried. But she tossed her head and ran up the steep stairs.

She would not look back at him even if he did stand at the foot of the stairs and call to her. He had hurt her when he had said that queens were no better than other people. The very idea! Mr. Bill never talked that way. Indeed, he never did! Tessie stopped thinking about disgruntled Joe Cary so that she could think of the wonderful Mr. Bill. Oh, wasn't he the most wonderful!

VI

In spite of her tearful assertion that she knew she would not sleep a wink, Tessie was soon dreaming of her new kingdom and of Mr. Bill. Not once did shabby Joe Cary intrude on her dream of glory. It seemed only a minute from the time she crept shiveringly into bed beside Granny, before Granny was shaking her shoulder.

"After nine o'clock, Tessie!" she was calling. "If you're going to Mifflin to get your ma's and pa's wedding license at ten, you'd better get up right away!"

Tessie opened her eyes slowly and reluctantly. She was afraid of what they would see. Yes, there was Granny calling her as she called her every morning. There was the ugly old bureau and the crayon portrait of her grandfather. Of course, she had been dreaming. She wasn't a queen. She had never been at the Waloo for dinner with the wonderful Mr. Bill. She would have to get up and put on her old sateen and go and sell aluminum in the Evergreen basement. She wished she hadn't dreamed that Uncle Pete had died and made her a queen. Such a dream as that made it harder than ever to waken. She had known all the time that it was only a dream. Such wonderful things never happened to poor working girls. And if it really was nine o'clock, she was afraid to imagine how Mr. Walker would rebuke her for her tardiness. Why had Granny let her sleep when Granny knew that she would be fined if she were late?

"And your friend, that Mr. Bill, stopped here half an hour ago on his way to the store," went on Granny, shaking out Tessie's clothes and hanging them on a chair. "We got to get you some new things, Tessie. These ain't royal. They don't do credit to your poor Uncle Pete, who's been so good to you. Mr. Bill said he stopped at the police station, and the police told him that we were right last night when we said that man on the porch was hit on the head. A friend came for him, and after he had talked to him, he told the police just how it was. The colored man was walking along the street, when all of a sudden he didn't know nothing. I don't suppose he could have upset my closets if he was unconscious, and so long as nothing's missing, I ain't going to worry. But there certainly were queer doings last night. You hurry right along, Tessie. Your coffee's all ready, and I warmed up the liver. No knowing where we'll be for dinner to-night, and we can't be wasteful even if we are queens."

There it was, that most disturbing word! Tessie swung her feet over the side of the bed and stared at her grandmother, who was already dressed in her black alpaca instead of her morning calico, and whose front hair must have been surprised to find itself out of curling pins at nine o'clock in the morning.

"Then it's all true!" she faltered. She told herself again that it couldn't be true. It just could not be true. She thought she would die if it wasn't true, but she knew it wasn't.

"What's true?" questioned Granny, who was putting the room to rights.

"That I'm a queen?" Tessie blushed hotly, as she asked the question. It was so perfectly ridiculous and unbelievable, and yet Granny talked as if it might be true.

Granny stood still with Tessie's worn blue serge suit in one hand and a clothesbrush in the other. "Of course you're a queen!" The firm confident tone sent a shiver of delight down Tessie's spine. "Didn't your Uncle Pete die and make you a queen? Come down just as soon as you're dressed, Tessie. We ain't got time to waste to-day."

Even when Bert Douglas drove up in a shining touring car, Tessie could not believe that she was to ride in it, although Bert told her that she was, and he for one was mighty glad that she was.

"We have a corking day!" he exclaimed, with an approving glance at the cloudless sky. "And we'll have a corking ride. I'm glad your people were married sixty miles from Waloo. This is just a formality, you know, Miss Gilfooly. We all know that you really are the Queen of the Sunshine Islands. We don't need any certificates." And he laughed joyously. It was so strange and unbelievable and delightful that he was to drive a young queen to Mifflin and back.

"It's so wonderful that I can't believe it," Tessie told him earnestly, and her voice quivered with the wonder of it. She looked speculatively at the tonneau of the big car. There was no one in it. "Could we take my grandmother, Mr. Douglas?" She raised her big blue eyes appealingly. "She would enjoy the ride. And my brother Johnny? He's a Boy Scout."

"Sure, we can take all the royal family," chuckled Bert. "There's plenty of room, and we'll feel safer to have a Scout with us." He laughed again as he hospitably opened the tonneau door.

Mrs. Scanlon stood at her window and watched Granny and Johnny settle themselves proudly in the car. She saw Tessie take the seat next to the wheel, and she was green with envy from her red hair to her patched black shoes. She had heard the news, and in her heart she wished that she had had a son to run away to sea and be a king. "My Lil would make a better-looking queen than that washed-out Tessie Gilfooly," she thought, as she watched them from behind the skimpy curtain. "Lil's suit was new this spring, and that blue dud Tessie has on is a year old if it's a day. I don't believe it's really true! Such things don't happen! Queen, indeed!" And she sniffed loudly and elevated her long thin nose because little Tessie Gilfooly had come home with some ridiculous story about being a queen.

Jonah, Johnny's dog--a mongrel with a most rakish brown spot on his white face--jumped wistfully around the car. Jonah wanted to drive to Mifflin too. He saw no reason why he should be left at home alone.

"Could we take him?" asked Granny, eager for the family to enjoy the ride as a family. "He'd enjoy it."

And Jonah joined the two in the tonneau.

"Just as well he's going," muttered Mrs. Scanlon. "I wouldn't have no time to feed anybody's dog to-day!" And to show how little she cared about the good fortune which had come to her neighbors, she took her chairs and tables out of the parlor and gave the room a thorough cleaning.

Bert was right. It was a wonderful day--a blue and gold day. There was not a cloud in the sky, nor a care in the car. The road to Mifflin was velvet smooth, so that the drive, as Bert had prophesied, was delightful. It was no time at all before they were in front of the red brick building which was Mifflin's new Court House. But when they went in and demanded a copy of the record of the marriage of John Gilfooly and Teresa Andrews, which had been solemnized in Mifflin twenty years ago, the clerk could not find the record.

"That's funny!" he exclaimed. "It was here yesterday, but it isn't here to-day!" He looked puzzled.

"Did you see it yesterday?" demanded Bert, with all the importance of a six-months lawyer.

"Sure I saw it yesterday. A man came in and asked for a copy. Funny thing! In all the time I've been here, no one has ever asked about that license. And now yesterday a man wanted it and to-day you want it." The coincidence impressed him as so strange that he blinked.

"Was he a black man and did he have a tattooed nose?" asked Tessie eagerly.

The clerk shook his head. "No, he had light hair and a big nose with freckles all over it. He was what you would call a blond. With a big nose," he insisted almost as if he thought it was quite unusual for a blond to have a nose at all.

Tessie looked at Bert, and at Granny and Johnny. But not one of them could tell her anything about a blond with a big nose. Granny could only shake her head.

"He must have sneaked the record when I went out to look at the fire," the clerk said indignantly. "Ferguson's store had a little blaze yesterday, and when I heard the fire engine I naturally went to the door. But I can't have this sort of thing," he added querulously. "I can't have my records stolen!"

"No, I shouldn't think you could," agreed Bert. "And you had better find out who stole this record."

"I shall!" The clerk was quite offended because Bert had thought it necessary to tell him what to do. "I'll call the sheriff right away." And he bustled over to the telephone.

"But--but why should any one steal my father's and mother's marriage license?" Tessie could not imagine why any one would steal a piece of paper. Money or a jewel--the Tear of God even--could be used, but a piece of paper----

Bert smiled at her puzzled face. "Some one might want to make it impossible for you to prove that you are John Gilfooly's eldest child," he explained carefully.

Tessie gasped. "The idea! But whoever would?" She could not imagine.

Granny bristled indignantly. "Well, they can't do that!" she declared. "Not while I have breath in my body to say she is! I guess I know!"

"Sure you do!" And Bert grinned at her.

But Granny wanted more than smiles. She wanted action--immediate action.

"What are we going to do now?" she demanded. "Can't Tessie be a queen unless she has her ma's and pa's wedding license?"

"I don't see why you need any old paper," put in Johnny. "If you want to know about the wedding of father and mother, all you have to do is to ask Granny. She was at the wedding, weren't you, Granny?"

Granny turned to gaze at him with pride. "Bless the boy!" she exclaimed in honest admiration. "Of course I was there! And I can tell the lawyers all about it! That was a bright thought, Johnny, but I'm glad it didn't come to you before. If you'd had it in Waloo we'd have missed a pleasant ride. I can tell you all about the wedding," she said to Bert, and there was much triumph in her voice, "all about the bride's dress and the refreshments and everything!"

"I don't believe that your evidence will be enough, Mrs. Gilfooly," Bert said reluctantly and regretfully, for he would have preferred to tell Granny that her story of the Gilfooly-Andrews wedding would be sufficient to place Tessie on any throne. "You are too near a relative to be disinterested. That's what the court would say," he explained hastily as Granny snorted.

"My soul and body!" She stared at him. "As if I'd lie about my own son or my own granddaughter! But there were other folks at the wedding," she, remembered joyously. "The Hortons, who live over on Olive street, were there. Sophie Horton was Tessie's mother's bridesmaid, and Sam Horton knocked over a piano lamp the night of the wedding and came near burning up the bride. He'll remember and be glad to tell you that my son John married Teresa Andrews right and proper. And that ain't all," went on Granny, who could accomplish great things when she began little things, "the man who married John and Teresa and baptized Tessie is alive to this day and living in this very town. We've only got to go to the Reverend Townshend's house to hear all about it. I suppose the law would believe a regular minister if it wouldn't believe a loving grandmother," she said to Bert, with a decided tinge of resentment in her hearty voice.

Bert laughed apologetically. "That's fine! But you understand, Mrs. Gilfooly, it is because you are so close to Miss Gilfooly that your evidence wouldn't be sufficient. The court might suspect such a near relative, but the word of the minister who married Miss Gilfooly's parents should be enough for any court."

"I should think so!" snorted Granny, who had nothing but contempt for a court which would not believe a grandmother.

They drove through the pretty streets of Mifflin to the home of Mr. Townshend, which was almost hidden by shrubbery and vines, and the Boy Scout rang the bell loudly. But Mr. Townshend was in Waloo visiting his sister, and the young granddaughter, who answered the bell, had never heard of the Gilfoolys.

"Never mind!" exclaimed Granny cheerfully, for Tessie looked as if she did mind. "We know where to go now for what we want, and that's everything, no matter what you're looking for. You say Reverend Townshend's sister lives on Tenth Avenue South?" she asked the young granddaughter. "Mr. Douglas will just drive us there and hear with his own ears what Reverend Townshend has to say."

"Sure I'll drive you!" Bert said. "That's my job!" And he looked as if he liked his job enormously.

But black luck preceded them, for when they returned to Waloo and drove to Tenth Avenue South, they learned that the Reverend Townshend had been knocked down by an automobile as he was crossing a street that afternoon, and was lying in the hospital with concussion of the brain. And they found, on driving to Olive street, that the Hortons had gone to Vermont for the summer.

"I don't believe I ever was born!" Tessie was almost in tears. Her lips quivered. So did her voice.

"Tut, tut!" rebuked her grandmother. "There were fifty-six folks, as I remember, at that wedding, and it will be funny if I can't find some of them. You don't want to get discouraged at the beginning of anything, Tessie, not if you ever want to see the end of it."

"Why don't you drop it, Tess?" advised Joe Cary, when he heard about the blond man with a big nose, the stolen marriage record, and about the Reverend Townshend who was in the hospital with concussion of the brain. "The Fates seem to be against you! So are some people, I should judge. There is evidently some one who doesn't want you to be the Queen of the Sunshine Islands. Look at last night! Look at to-day! Why do you want to be a queen, anyway?" He asked the question as he would have asked why she wanted to be a salesgirl, or why she did not want to be a stenographer.

Tessie stared at him. The idea of asking such a question! Joe Cary was crazy! And she told him so. "You talk as if being a queen was like selling aluminum in the Evergreen!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"It isn't as decent!" cried Joe, and then Tessie knew, beyond a doubt, that he was crazy.

"You can't stop being a queen if you are one!" she flared.

"Why can't you?" demanded Joe. "Can't you abdicate? Seems to me I've read of several kings and queens who were glad to abdicate. You don't have to be a queen unless you please, Tessie Gilfooly!" He actually did seem to think that being a queen was like selling aluminum.

"Joe--Joe Cary--" she began in exasperation, and then she startled him by bursting into tears--"you--you never want me to have any f-fun!" she hiccuped.

"Oh, great Scott, Tess!" he said helplessly, and he would have taken her in his arms and kissed the tears away, she was so little and sweet and unreasonable, but Granny snatched her from him.

"There, there, my lamb!" she crooned. "You're all tired out. You just come to your old Granny. There's some folks," she said over her shoulder to Joe, "who are quick enough to tell other folks what to do, but I wonder what they would say if they were to find themselves kings."

Joe stared at her, and then he laughed. "I know what I would do," he declared promptly. "I never would be a king! Not for a minute!" He seemed proud of himself--of what he would be.

"Then you'd be a coward, Joe Cary, and a shirk!" Granny pricked the balloon of his pride with her frankness. "When the good Lord puts responsibilities and duties on a body's shoulders, he can't throw 'em off without being a coward and a shirk. What he has to do is to carry them the best he knows how. Now I want you to stop picking on Tessie just because she's a queen. It isn't her fault, and you needn't talk to her as if it was. We don't none of us know why she was picked out to look after those queer folks in the Pacific Ocean, but I guess the good Lord knows His business, and He knows the Gilfoolys. It isn't any crime to be a queen. It's a privilege, and we're all going to enjoy it with Tessie. I don't want to hear any more picking," she repeated sternly.

"All right, Granny," Joe murmured meekly, but his eyes twinkled. "Just as you say. Tess can think she is Queen of England, and I shan't say another word!"

VII

"And about this wedding license, I'll put on my thinking cap," remarked Granny. She went into the bedroom and closed the door.

When Tessie was a little thing and heard Granny talk of her thinking cap, she always visualized the cap as something between the formal Sunday black straw or velvet, and the Monday morning gingham sunbonnet Granny wore when she hung out the washing. And now that Tessie was a big girl, she knew no more of what a thinking cap was like than she had when she was seven, for Granny had never worn one in public. She always closed the door before she put it on.

But as usual, the thinking cap quickly produced results, and in no time at all Granny emerged with half a dozen names scribbled on a piece of paper. They soon found Mrs. Waterman and Mr. Jacob Dassett, who had been at the wedding of John Gilfooly and Teresa Andrews, and could remember the ceremony perfectly. They were thrilled to hear that the inheritance, a kingdom in the Pacific Ocean, of the daughter of John Gilfooly and Teresa Andrews, might hang on their word, and they grew incoherent as they ransacked their memories for recollections of twenty years ago.

"A queen!" exclaimed the astonished Mrs. Waterman. "Can you believe it! And a mighty pretty queen she'll make!" She looked with admiration at Tessie's flushed and dimpled face. "The spitting image of her ma, ain't she, Mrs. Gilfooly? And I tell you, miss, there wasn't a prettier girl in the state than Tessie Andrews when she married John Gilfooly. Ain't I right, Mrs. Gilfooly?"

Granny nodded. "John was a handsome man, too," she declared. "They made a beautiful couple, Tessie. I wish you could have seen them!"

"You bet I remember the wedding of Jack Gilfooly and Tess Andrews!" Mr. Dassett spoke a bit testily that any one should have thought he would have forgotten. "Didn't Sam Horton knock over the lamp and near set the bride on fire? It would have been a bad deal for you, young lady," he smiled at Tessie, "if he had. There wouldn't have been no queens then, you bet!"

Granny's thinking cap produced not only witnesses to the wedding, but also told her where to unearth old Doctor Grannis, who had brought Tessie into the world, and who swore he remembered the six-pound, red-faced mite.

"Well, are you satisfied now?" Granny asked Mr. Marvin, when the statements of her witnesses, duly signed and adorned with notarial seals, lay on the desk before him.

"Perfectly!" But Mr. Marvin did not look at her and smile, he looked at her blushing granddaughter. "Perfectly! The court can ask for nothing more. But you can understand, Mrs. Gilfooly, why we cannot accept the evidence of the interested parties. But these statements make everything all right, and Miss Gilfooly is Queen of the Sunshine Islands." He rose and bowed to Her Majesty. "But according to the terms of her uncle's will, she is to remain here until his personal representative arrives to escort her to her kingdom. And in the meantime--" He touched the button on his desk.

Tessie and Granny held their breaths as they waited to hear what was going to happen in the meantime.

At the whirr of the buzzer, the door, which had been tightly closed opened, and Bert Douglas shot in. He was followed by a man who was not black nor red nor yellow, but an attractive combination of the three colors. He wore a blue blouse hanging over his trousers which flapped around his bare feet. His hair was frizzed and stiffened until it stood half a foot away from his scalp and was adorned with shells. His nose was tattooed in red and blue, and in his hand he carried an ax. At least Granny called the strange weapon an ax. The blade shone like silver.

Granny shrieked when she saw him, and clutched Tessie by the hand as if she would run away with her. Johnny the Boy Scout stepped bravely before the women of his family and stared at the strange creature, who stood with bowed head and an air of great humility. His humility did not deceive Granny, not for a second. She did not trust him, and she kept a firm hold of Tessie's fingers.

"This is Ka-kee-ta, the protector of the royal person," exclaimed Mr. Marvin.

And as if to prove his words, Ka-kee-ta jumped into the air and clicked his bare feet together before he dropped on his knees before Tessie, and laid the blade of his ax against her shabby brown shoes. Tessie shrank back and caught her breath.

"It is his duty and privilege to accompany the king, or queen, wherever he may go," went on Mr. Marvin. "He came with the Honolulu lawyer, who brought the papers concerning King Pete's death, and the king's will. When he saw Miss Gilfooly he was so convinced that she was the rightful heir, that he gave her the royal jewel, the Tear of God, and it has been difficult to keep him from her until these formalities," he tapped the sworn statements with the notarial seals, "were settled. Now," he smiled and rose, regarding Tessie with amused kindly eyes, "he will protect and guard his queen."

"Oh, my!" breathed his queen, in mingled dismay and excitement. She stared at her guard.

It was Granny who looked dubiously at the protector of the royal person.

"Do you mean he'll board with us?" she asked, wondering how on earth she was going to find room for him in her little cottage.

"I guess I can look after my own sister," declared the Boy Scout, red with indignation, and no wonder. But he, too, stared at Ka-kee-ta. Gee whizz! what would the fellows say when they saw him?

"He will always be near the queen," Mr. Marvin answered Granny, but he ignored Johnny. "I understand that it is the custom in the Sunshine Islands for the ruler to have a bodyguard."

"But who is to feed him and sleep him until this personal representative comes to Waloo?" demanded Granny. "Now that Tessie's left her job at the Evergreen, there won't be so much coming in as there was. And a big strapping chap like that will eat a lot!" Granny shook her head. She did not see how it was to be done. She stepped forward and looked boldly at Mr. Marvin. "I'd like to know just what there is in this queen business for us?" she asked bluntly. "Tessie isn't living like a queen according to my way of thinking. Our house, even if it is small and needs paint, was all right for a girl when she was selling aluminum in the Evergreen, but it ain't all right for a queen. A queen shouldn't live in a house where there ain't any electric light, nor no dining room, and no plaster on half the kitchen ceiling--for it fell down last spring when we had the big rainstorm, you remember? It isn't a proper place for a queen at all! And clothes! We all need new clothes with a queen in the family. But where are we going to get them? Are there any wages in this queen business?"

"My dear Mrs. Gilfooly! And Miss Gilfooly!" Mr. Marvin was all apologies. "There are ample funds for anything you may wish to purchase. I could not advance any money until the question of Miss Gilfooly's birth had been settled beyond dispute, but now--" he said something in a low voice to grinning Bert Douglas, who left the room. "It is impossible for me to say exactly what the queen's income will be, but I understand it will be large and generous. From what I hear I should say that the Sunshine Islands are rich and prosperous. The natives will do well by their little queen. And there is also King Peter's personal estate. We will know all about the exact figures when the personal representative arrives. But you are right when you say that the queen should be properly housed. And you could scarcely be expected to provide for Ka-kee-ta on your present income!" He laughed softly to think that any one would think she should.

"I might be expected to. Some folks expect a body to do everything," cackled Granny, mollified and radiant. "But I couldn't do it even if I am a good manager. I might have trusted Pete to arrange for everything even if the Pete I knew never thought of anybody but himself. He was only a boy, then," she explained apologetically, "and there ain't no boy so thoughtful as a grown man. And this--this--" She looked at Ka-kee-ta, who stood just behind Tessie, the blade of his ax glittering beside his bushy head. "He was Pete's friend?" she asked uncertainly.

"The protector of the royal person. The privilege is inherited in his family. I believe it descends from father to son. Miss Gilfooly will doubtless find many strange customs in the islands. There are old traditions in all countries, you know, and the people guard them jealously. Ah," as Bert returned and placed a check before him. He wrote his name, carefully blotted it, and handed the check to Tessie.

Before Tessie could look at it, Granny had it in her fingers. If Ka-kee-ta was protector of the royal person Granny proposed to be the keeper of the royal purse.

"My soul and body!" she exclaimed when she saw the figures. "The good Lord sure has a friendly feeling for the Gilfoolys! We'll be able to board Ka-kee-ta and his ax at the Waloo Hotel. I'll be glad to move. It's mortifying to the Gilfooly pride to have newspaper reporters and newspaper photographers pointing out all the shabby places in the house. You'll let us know, Mr. Marvin, when that special representative comes to town? Tessie and I'll be getting ready for him."

"I'll let you know," promised Mr. Marvin. "And may I say," he took Tessie's little hand, "may I say that, in all my career as a lawyer, I never had a more romantic nor more interesting case than this. Most romantic and most interesting!" he repeated. "If you need any advice or any help, do not hesitate to call on us. Mr. Douglas will be glad to be of service to you at any time." He looked at Mr. Douglas, who had turned a delighted crimson at being assigned to such romantic and interesting service.

"I'll be glad to do anything I can!" he stammered.

"That's real kind," smiled Granny, while Tessie flushed and told him he was real kind, too. "You might go over to the Waloo and pick out a good room for us and one for Ka-kee-ta, while Tessie and I think about clothes. We can't appear in public in what we got. They wouldn't do credit to Pete. And these newspaper men would be sure to photograph us in our worst. We'll have to keep dressed up all the time now."

VIII

If she lives to be a thousand, Tessie Gilfooly will never forget the day she spent shopping in the Evergreen. It was so vastly different from the days she had spent in the Evergreen selling aluminum.

"Get everything you want and what a queen should have," Mr. Kingley had said, even before he saw the check Mr. Marvin gave Tessie. "Shoes and hats and everything. Miss Morley will help you." And he sent for Miss Morley, who went to New York every month and had been to Paris twice, and so would know what queens should wear.

Tessie was considerably in awe of Miss Morley with her black hair swirled around her head, her face delicately painted, her black canton crepe--no cheap black sateen for Miss Morley--the latest thing in frocks. But Miss Morley was looking at her with such frank admiration that she dared to smile shyly as she blushed.

"It's awfully kind of you to help me," she even dared to say.

"I'll be glad to help you." Miss Morley smiled, too. "I never dressed a queen before, and it will be great fun. We'll begin at the very beginning because I expect that your underthings are no more royal than your outside clothes."

"I've always wanted silk things," apologized Tessie, her hands fluttering among the soft flesh-colored crepes and satins. She loved them. She wanted them all. She longed to feel the touch of them on her slim little body which had known only coarse cotton.

But Miss Morley pushed the lovely things contemptuously away. She even tilted her long aristocratic nose at them.

"They're all right for silly shopgirls and cheap persons," she declared scornfully, "but what a queen wants--oh, Rose, haven't you any linen, fine and sheer, hand-sewed and hand-hem-stitched?"

And when Miss Rose Beacon of the lingerie had produced a special box in which was linen, soft and fine, and enriched with much dainty hand-work, she drew a long breath.

"There!" She pushed the cobwebby things towards Tessie. "That's what queens wear!" She said it as positively as if she had dressed a queen every day of her life.

"But--" faltered Tessie, looking longingly at the flesh-colored satins and crepes.

"Half a dozen sets of these, Rose," ordered Miss Morley. "And as many gowns."

"And half a dozen sets of the satin, too," whispered Tessie, the minute Miss Morley turned her back. "I've always wanted silk underclothes, and now I'm going to have some even if all queens don't wear them. I guess I can afford them!"

It was the same all through the store. Tessie found what she had coveted and sighed over was not proper for a queen. She had to buy flat-heeled broad-toed shoes for walking, instead of the narrow-toed high heels for which her soul yearned.

"High heels for dress, low heels for the street. Don't ever make the mistake of wearing high heels on the street, Miss Gilfooly," advised Miss Morley. "They'll make you look cheap and common."

"No, ma'am," Tessie murmured meekly, but she privately resolved to wear her high heels when and where she pleased. Miss Morley would not be with her always. And how could high heels make any girl look cheap and common? They looked expensive and fine to Tessie's big blue eyes.

Miss Morley would not let her wear lace stockings with her street shoes, but demanded a plain heavy silk. The dark blue crepe frock which was finally chosen to cover the dainty camisole and plain dark blue bloomers, was as simple as a frock could be, but it was a French model and it made Tessie a very different girl from the one who had worn the old black sateen.

"Now," remarked Miss Morley when half a dozen frocks had been chosen, always the plainest and the simplest, "we'll go up to the third and have your hair dressed."

"I can do my own hair," Tessie exclaimed eagerly. She was aghast at the amount of money she had spent. Who ever would suppose that such plain things would cost so much?

"I said dressed," smiled Miss Morley. "You can do your hair like the shopgirls," she seemed to have a vast contempt for the way shopgirls dressed and did their hair, "but what you want is a simple coiffure--something royal!"

She told the astonished head of the hairdressing department what she thought would be simple and royal, and she stood beside Tessie while Mrs. Nelson took the buns from Tessie's ears, and redressed her hair in simple waves. Tessie had pretty hair with a soft natural curl in it, and she had a well-shaped head, although she had very successfully concealed that fact with her buns and her rolls. But the clever professional fingers made the most of her wavy hair and of the shape of her head.

"There!" Miss Morley approved of the result if Tessie did look at it a bit doubtfully and wonder if it could be all right. "Now for a manicure!"

When Miss Morley at last took Tessie down to show Mr. Kingley what could be done by the Evergreen, they met Mr. Bill on the threshold. He was trying to talk to Ka-kee-ta, who had reluctantly consented to wait for his queen in the office, and who only had grunts in answer to Mr. Bill's questions. Mr. Bill looked at Miss Morley and at Tessie. And he looked again at Tessie. _Was_ it Tessie? Tessie blushed and dimpled.

"Well, I'll be darned!" he exclaimed unbelievingly. "If it isn't Queen Teresa! You certainly make one sweet peach of a queen!" He was quite scarlet and somewhat incoherent in his admiration.

"Clothes do make a difference, don't they, Mr. Bill?" asked Miss Morley, proud of what she had made of Tessie. "She looks quite smart now, doesn't she? I've been working over her all morning."

"Good work!" approved Mr. Bill. "I'll say she looks all right!" And his hearty admiration deepened the color in Tessie's cheeks as well as in his own face. Imagine Mr. Bill saying that Tessie Gilfooly looked all right! No wonder Tessie's face was pink, and her eyes shone.

Mr. Kingley admired Tessie also and told Miss Morley that she had done well--remarkably well.

"I knew the Evergreen could outfit a woman for any position," he said with great satisfaction. "You selected other garments than what she is wearing?"

"You said to fit her out appropriately but not foolishly." Miss Morley repeated the orders she had received. "I have chosen a couple of afternoon frocks, dinner gowns and evening gowns and a little jersey and a serge for day wear."

"And hats?" suggested Mr. Kingley. "A queen can't wear her crown all the time." And he laughed at his joke.

"And hats." Miss Morley was polite enough and clever enough to laugh with him. "And shoes and everything. She has a very complete little outfit."

"That's good. That's very good. You might collect the gowns and hats, Miss Morley, and make a little exhibition of them to-morrow before they are delivered. Miss Gilfooly can wait a day longer for them, and our customers will be interested in a royal wardrobe. Have Miss Lee run a little story in the _Gazette_. It isn't every store," he told them proudly, "that could fit out a queen at a moment's notice. You arrange a little exhibition, Miss Morley, and we'll invite Waloo to come and see it. You'll like that, my dear," he told Tessie, who was not sure that she would like it at all.

Joe Cary, bringing a message to Mr. Kingley from Mr. Maltby, the assistant advertising manager, who had been discharged from his jury, most certainly did not like it and he dared to say so.

"Your clothes belong to you, Tess. Don't you make a show of them," he advised in a whisper.

Mr. Kingley went on talking, and he sounded as though he had heard Joe's whisper, although he never looked at Joe.

"A queen owes that sort of thing to her people. They want show and celebration and pageants in return for their money. You must expect that now you are a queen," he told Tessie.

"Huh," sniffed Joe, and he spoke louder than perhaps he meant to speak, for Mr. Kingley looked at him.

"What did you say, Cary?" he asked sharply.

"Here are those proofs from the _Gazette_ for the wash-goods sale," he said. "And as for queens and kings, the fewer there are, the better the world will be."

"This is no place for anarchism, Cary," Mr. Kingley told him coldly. "Go and tell Mr. Maltby I want to see him at once. And, Cary, you might make a little sketch of Miss Gilfooly as she is now and Maltby can run it with a line--'Royalty Clothed by the Evergreen'--under it. It will please the people, my dear. They'll like to come and buy where queens buy," he said shrewdly.

"Huh!" muttered Joe. "Don't you let them make a monkey of you for the old Evergreen, Tess," he whispered, as he went for his pencil and drawing board, after he had mastered his impulse to "punch old Kingley in the snout."

But Tessie never heard him. Joe and his mutters were an old story, but a new and very fascinating tale was the admiration of Mr. Bill and his father. She gladly agreed to everything that Mr. Kingley suggested.

"Of course," went on Mr. Kingley, with the zeal of an artist who wanted his work to be quite perfect, "of course you don't know anything about royal etiquette."

"Perhaps I could get a book in the book department," suggested Tessie meekly. Mr. Kingley was right. She knew absolutely nothing of how a queen should conduct herself, but if the Evergreen could clothe royalty, surely it could tell a queen how to behave.

Mr. Kingley shook his head. He did not believe there was such a volume among the thousands of books in the big department. Miss Morley shook her head, too. Mr. Bill just stood and stared at Tessie.

"There's old Madame Cabot!" suggested Miss Morley suddenly. "She was presented at court when she was a girl, and her uncle was minister to Italy. I read it in the _Gazette_ in the story on her seventieth birthday. She could tell Miss Gilfooly the way the Queen of Italy did things. I should think that would help her."

"It undoubtedly would help her. You are very resourceful, Miss Morley--very resourceful." And Mr. Kingley showered Miss Morley with his august approval. "Bill, call up your mother and ask her to arrange to take Miss Gilfooly to see Madame Cabot as soon as possible."

"Shouldn't Madame Cabot call on the queen?" Mr. Bill did not want to take his eyes from Tessie to call up any one. He was perfectly satisfied to let matters remain as they were.

"Madame Cabot is an old lady, and under the circumstances I am sure that our queen will waive etiquette and go to her. It will be a great privilege to have her help. Madame Cabot is a great lady."

"I know!" Tessie was faint and breathless at the mere thought of going to see Madame Cabot. Tessie knew the aristocratic old lady by sight, but she had never sold her so much as a kitchen spoon. She was a little awed at the prospect of talking to her as queen to queen, but she bravely lifted her head and looked at Mr. Kingley. "It will be awfully kind of her to help me. I don't know anything," she admitted with a rosy shame which was adorable--at least, Mr. Bill thought it was adorable. "I had to leave school before I graduated from the high."

"You can learn. You can have teachers and learn," advised Mr. Kingley. "And Madame Cabot can help you if she will."

"If she only will!" breathed Miss Morley, and for the first time since she had been with Tessie, she seemed envious. She had not envied Tessie her new clothes nor her throne, but she did seem to envy her the possibility of a talk with Madame Cabot. "She knows! She has the most perfect manners! You'll be helped just by looking at her," she told Tessie.

Mr. Bill jeered. "That old dame," he began, but he was not allowed to go any farther.

"My son!" rebuked his scandalized father.

"Mr. Bill!" exclaimed Miss Morley, so aghast that her delicately tinted face acquired a lavender tint.

"Oh, all right," Mr. Bill said carelessly. "Only if you want my opinion, which of course isn't worth a bean to you, you'll leave Miss Gilfooly alone. She's all right as she is! My word, I should think she was! I suppose Madame Cabot is all right, too, but she's old and our little queen is young. What is all right for an old lady might be all wrong for a young one!"

Tessie's pink face grew pinker. She had not a word to say, she could only blush and dimple until Mr. Bill blushed, too.

"You call up your mother!" ordered Mr. Kingley curtly.

Tessie could scarcely breathe when Mr. Bill put her in the limousine beside his mother, while Ka-kee-ta slipped into the front seat, although the chauffeur looked at him out of the corner of a most scornful eye. Mr. Bill's mother was so proud and so haughty that Tessie had never expected to ride with her. Mrs. Kingley had never been in the hardware department while Tessie had been there, and Tessie had had only an occasional glimpse of her when she had been sent up from the basement on some errand. She had never imagined that she would ever be on friendly terms with her, and yet Mrs. Kingley seemed quite friendly. She smiled pleasantly--even cordially.

"And this is our little queen! No, Bill, your father would not want you to come with us! Surely you have work to do here!"

"Take Miss Gilfooly home to dinner, and I'll go back and see if I can find anything to do," suggested Mr. Bill, showing his firm white teeth in an appealing grin.

"Bill! I expect the queen has a dinner engagement." But Tessie hadn't, and she managed to gather breath and courage to say so. "Well, we will see," Mrs. Kingley promised Mr. Bill. "Madame Cabot is expecting us," she told Tessie as they drove away and left Mr. Bill standing somewhat disconsolate on the curb. "How romantic it is! I expect you are quite excited? It is enough to excite any girl to be told that she is a queen. I remember I saw Queen Mary once--of England, you know--before the war. She was riding in a coach with outriders, and it made Bill and me think of a circus parade. I must say she looked a frump. You are very well turned out, my dear. You look quite as a queen should look." And she frankly approved of the quiet little hat and plain frock Miss Morley had chosen.

"I got them at the Evergreen. Mr. Kingley has been so kind," Tessie told Mr. Kingley's wife gratefully.

Mrs. Kingley smiled knowingly. "I expect Mr. Kingley knows what he is about. It pleased him immensely to have all those stories about you and the Evergreen in the newspapers. I tell Mr. Kingley that's what he lives for--the Evergreen. By the way, don't be nervous if Madame Cabot is a little severe. You must remember that you are a queen and hold up your head," she advised, as they stopped before the old mansion where Madame Cabot had lived for almost half a century.

Madame Cabot was not a bit severe. It pleased her to be interested in this new royalty, and she searched her memory for any reminiscence which would help Tessie.

"But the etiquette of your islands will be so different from anything I have known, that I doubt if I can be of much assistance to you," she said slowly. "Be simple and honest, my dear. That will be your best rule. Don't claim to know more than you do. Your people will understand that you were not brought up to be a queen, and they will not expect you to know their customs and manners. Tell them frankly that you are ignorant, but that you want to learn. That is by far the best way. Don't you think so, Mrs. Kingley?"

"Oh, quite," agreed Mrs. Kingley, unobtrusively pinching herself to make sure that she really was there talking to Madame Cabot about the proper behavior of queens. It was so unbelievable that she had to give herself quite a sharp pinch to be quite sure.

And while the two older women talked of queens and their behavior, Tessie looked around the old-fashioned room and drank her tea from the thin china cups, and wished that the sandwiches were larger, for she was hungry, and of course, a queen would never take but one sandwich no matter how small it was.

"You have been so kind," she said shyly to Madame Cabot, when the audience was over. "I shan't ever forget how kind you have been. And I shall try and remember to be honest and simple," she promised from the bottom of her grateful heart. She thought she could manage to do that, and she was very grateful to Madame Cabot for so easy a rule. She had been afraid that Madame Cabot would tell her of hard things she would have to do. But any one could be simple and honest.

And Madame Cabot, the great and exclusive Madame Cabot, was touched by her humble appreciation and by the shy wistfulness in her rosy face.

"Bless the child!" she exclaimed quite as Granny might have exclaimed, and she stooped and kissed Tessie's pink cheek. "You must come and see me again. I like young people--especially pretty young girls."

Mrs. Kingley purred. She knew, if Tessie did not, what an invitation from Madame Cabot meant. "I am going to take her home with me," she told Madame Cabot almost proudly. "Just a little family dinner."

IX

The story of Queen Teresa appeared in the _Gazette_. It seemed to splash all over the front page. There was the picture of Tessie in her black frock at the aluminum, there was a cut of a tropical island overgrown with gigantic palm trees, and in the corner was the drawing of Tessie with a crown on her head and seated in a big carved chair under a huge palm tree, receiving the homage of a throng of people in queer costumes--or in no costumes at all.

"We'll cut this out and keep it, Tessie," Granny said, proud that the Gilfoolys occupied so much of the front page of Waloo's most important newspaper. "Maybe some day you'll like to read it again."

Granny read it any number of times and obtained much information from the article on the Sunshine Islands, for the reporter had borrowed Tessie's library books in which none of the Gilfoolys had had time to look.

"I don't know how I'm going to like this kingdom of yours, Tessie." Granny looked over her glasses at the young queen, who was trying on a new frock before the full-length mirror in their suite at the Waloo Hotel. "Raw fish they eat, and their gravy's made out of sea water and lemon juice and cocoanut milk. Sounds like a mess to me! And the best people don't seem to eat chicken. They eat pork. I don't know how I'm going to like it."

Tessie turned away from the long mirror which had reflected a charming little creature in a smart frock of blue taffeta, and hugged her grandmother. Much she cared about gravy. But there was still considerable awe in her voice as she cried, "Granny! can you believe it? Isn't it too wonderful?" Her voice shook with the wonder of it. Her whole body trembled as she pressed close to Granny.

"There, there!" Granny patted her cheek. "It's all true enough. You've only got to look at Ka-kee-ta and smell that cocoanut oil he pours over his head to know it's true. It makes me more nervous to have him always standing at the front door with his meat ax than it does to be alone with that Tear of God. Protector, indeed! I guess Johnny could protect us all we need protecting. Or Joe Cary! I didn't feel right, Tessie, to go off and leave Joe Cary alone in the old house, but he wouldn't come with us and there wasn't room for Ka-kee-ta there, and so there wasn't anything else to do. And that's another thing that makes me wonder about this new job of yours, Tessie. What kind of a country is it where the queen has to have a man with a meat ax to protect her?"

Tessie laughed and hugged her grandmother again. "Silly old dear!" she said lovingly. "Mr. Douglas explained it all to me. There isn't any necessity now, Granny, or at least he doesn't think there is. It's just a custom. Once upon a time it was necessary, Mr. Douglas said, for the king to have a bodyguard to protect him from his enemies, but now it's probably just a custom. Anyway, I haven't any enemies," she finished triumphantly.

"Gracious, I should hope not! And I hope to goodness Mr. Douglas knows what he's talking about and it is only a custom," grumbled Granny. "It don't sound good to me, but I'm old-fashioned and maybe it's all right. It certainly did make folks stare when we walked into the Evergreen with Ka-kee-ta walking behind us with his meat ax. I guess everybody in the store knew you was somebody with Mr. Kingley and his son and all the clerks a-hanging around!" She laughed happily as she recalled the pleasant experience. "And that lady they called the advertising--what was she doing here last night, Tessie?"

"She came to help me look over my mail." Tessie sighed as she remembered her mail. "I never could have done it alone, Granny."

"You poor child!" sympathized Granny, as she too visualized Tessie's mail, which had been brought to her in a huge clothes-basket.

The publication in the _Gazette_ of the romantic story of the queen who was found in the basement of the Evergreen, had been the signal for an army to take to typewriters and pens, at least it seemed as if it must have taken an army to write the enormous number of letters which had been addressed to Queen Teresa, or to Miss Teresa Gilfooly, Queen, or to Her Majesty, Miss Gilfooly.

There were seventy-three proposals of marriage from men who stated that they were willing to be kings, and that they were strong and fearless and would help Queen Teresa govern her kingdom. There were innumerable letters from automobile dealers, florists, dressmakers, shoemakers, milliners, jewelers, stationers, real estate dealers, railroad and steamship agents, caterers, architects, house decorators, dancing teachers. Indeed every one who was in business in Waloo wasted no time in calling Queen Teresa's attention to the fact and to the knowledge that he was eager to serve her, and the sooner the better.

There were letters from philanthropic organizations asking the queen's patronage for orphanages and old peoples' homes. There were letters from girls who wanted to be singers or dancers, and from boys who wanted to be painters or poets and who asked for loans from the royal treasury. There were letters from people who wanted mortgages raised and doctors paid or victrolas bought.

And here came a boy with another basket filled with mail. It was too provoking. If Tessie read half of them she would have time for nothing else. And after the first basketful, the reading of the letters was a stupid task. You can understand why Tessie looked at them in horror and despair.

"You'll have to get a secretary," grinned Mr. Bill, who had brought Tessie a huge bunch of violets, "or throw them out. They aren't worth reading. Throw them out!"

"I can't do that," frowned Tessie, her nose buried in the violets. "It wouldn't be right. There might be something in one of them, you know, something I should know about." Tessie showed every symptom of taking her royal duties seriously. "Mr. Marvin said Mr. Douglas could help me. Perhaps----"

"Bert!" interrupted Mr. Bill quickly. "Bert couldn't help you in this sort of a job." Mr. Bill was quite sure that Bert would be worse than useless. "You want to have a woman. Miss Lee helped you yesterday, didn't she? I expect Dad would let you have her again. You know her and you like her?" Tessie nodded, and her face brightened. She would like to have Norah Lee help her. Norah was not a stranger. "Just chuck the stuff away and let Miss Lee look after it and come with me for a spin around the lakes. You'll be sick if you stay cooped up here all day. Come on! Just the two of us!" he coaxed.

Tessie hesitated, and you know what happens when people hesitate. She allowed Mr. Bill to push the big basket full of letters under the table and ran to put on her hat. Just outside the door stood Ka-kee-ta, an object of terror to the hotel staff and of pride to the hotel guests. He drew himself up as Tessie came out with Mr. Bill and raising his ax to his shoulder fell in behind them. Mr. Bill stopped.

"The queen won't need you, Ka-kee-ta," he said carelessly. "I'll look after her."

"Yes, Ka-kee-ta, you can take a rest," smiled Tessie.

"Glad to be rid of him for awhile?" grinned Mr. Bill, as he followed Tessie into the elevator. "Hello!" as they shot down and passed another cage shooting up. "There is our friend Douglas going up to see you."

"Oh!" And as the elevator stopped at the office floor Tessie hesitated. "Perhaps I should go back? Perhaps he has come to tell me that the special representative has come from the islands? Perhaps----"

"That's enough of perhapses." Mr. Bill dared to put his hand on her arm. When he was with Tessie he frequently forgot that she was a queen and that he was only a floorwalker in the Evergreen. "What do you care? It won't hurt your special representative to wait for you. You have had to wait for him. Come on! I dare you!"

Again Tessie hesitated, and then she laughed softly and walked down the corridor with Mr. Bill. All around her she heard whispers. "That's Queen Teresa! She used to sell face cream at the Evergreen and now she's Queen of the Sunshine Islands!" It was exciting if it was not altogether truthful.

When they reached the curb where Mr. Bill's car was parked, and Tessie was settled on the front seat, there at her side, his hand on the door, was Ka-kee-ta, ax and all.

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Tessie. "Couldn't a queen ever go anywhere with a gentleman friend?" She looked at Mr. Bill for an answer to her unuttered question.

Mr. Bill frowned at the royal bodyguard. "Look here, Ka-kee-ta," he said sharply, "didn't I tell you that I would take care of the queen?"

Much Ka-kee-ta cared what Mr. Bill had said. He arranged himself in a graceful loop on the running board, close to Tessie's elbow, and there was every indication that he meant to stay there as long as Tessie remained in the car.

"Oh, dear!" Tessie was almost in tears. What a lot queens did have to endure!

"Here!" Mr. Bill threw open the door of the tonneau. "If you will insist on going where you're not wanted, sit there!" And he waved his hand toward the rear seat.

With a look that measured the distance between the front seat and the back, Ka-kee-ta stepped into the car and settled himself with a grunt. He held his ax straight before him. He did look so silly that he made Tessie feel silly, too. She wanted to cry.

"Comfy?" Mr. Bill asked tenderly, as he put his finger on the self-starter.

She stopped wanting to cry because she discovered that she wanted to smile. "Awfully comfy! But I do hate to be tagged around by 'that' all the time!" And she frowned as she jerked her head back to indicate the watchful bodyguard.

"We'll forget all about him. And about queens, too, shall we?" As he bent to hear her answer, he all but ran into a car which had raced toward them.

With a snarl Ka-kee-ta was on his feet, his ax suspended over Mr. Bill's head.

"Ka-kee-ta!" Tessie grasped his arm and held it with all of her might.

"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Bill with a deep breath. "That was a close shave. Looked as if that machine was deliberately trying to run us down. But we're all right, aren't we?" He saw that Tessie was all right. "Sit down, old friend!" he said to Ka-kee-ta, "and watch your ax. I'd kill myself before I'd let anything happen to your queen. I mean that!" he told Tessie in a husky voice.

"You're awfully kind," murmured Tessie, her heart beating so fast and so loud that she was sure Mr. Bill must hear it.

"I wish you weren't a queen!" Mr. Bill exclaimed impulsively.

"Why?" Tessie's eyes widened.

"Why? Do you like to have Ka-kee-ta trailing you all the time?" He gave her just one reason why she might wish she were not a queen.

"No, but I like to be a queen," she answered truthfully.

"I suppose a girl would," in disgust. "We could have a lot more fun if you were just a--just a--"

"Nobody!" Tessie finished the sentence for him. "But when I was a nobody, Mr. Bill, you never saw me! You never knew I was on earth until I was a queen!"

"That isn't fair!" stammered Mr. Bill, when he was confronted with the truth. "That isn't fair!"

"It's true, isn't it?" demanded Tessie triumphantly. "I should say I am glad I'm a queen!"

"So I would know you are on earth?" asked Mr. Bill softly, and quite forgetting the gulf which is supposed to yawn between queens and floorwalkers.

But Tessie would not admit that that was the reason she was glad to be a queen. No girl would.

"The idea!" she said instead, and sat up straighter and refused to exchange tender glances with him. "Is this a good car?" she asked in a most matter-of-fact voice. "I have to buy a car, and I don't know which is a good one."

"I do!" exclaimed Mr. Bill emphatically. "And I'll help you buy a car. I'll help you do anything!" And he might have dared to put his hand on the royal fingers, they were so soft and white as they rested on her knee beside him, but a snarl from the rear made him realize that Ka-kee-ta's eyes were watchful. "I wish we could lose him," he grumbled.

"So do I," agreed Tessie heartily.

But Ka-kee-ta snarled louder and jumped to his feet and stared at a car which had come so close to them that it had almost scraped their fender. He waved his ax wildly.

"The shark!" he shouted. "The shark!"

Mr. Bill stopped his car dead. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "What do you mean?"

"The shark!" squealed Ka-kee-ta with another flourish of his ax.

"That's what the man we found on the porch said!" exclaimed Tessie anxiously. "What do you suppose he means?" And when Mr. Bill could not tell her she turned to Ka-kee-ta. "What do you mean, Ka-kee-ta?"

The car which had all but scraped their fender, turned a corner and was out of sight.

"The shark," mumbled Ka-kee-ta, and dropped back in his place.

"Well, I'll be darned!" muttered Mr. Bill, as he started his engine. "What did he mean? He couldn't see any shark, could he? What did he mean?"

But Ka-kee-ta refused to tell them why he had jumped up and shouted. He sulked and fiddled with his ax, and at last they left him alone.

"There are so many things I don't understand," sighed Tessie. "I--I don't know what I would do if I didn't have you to help me. Sometimes I wish the police hadn't been so quick about letting that other man go. It must mean something when two black men talk about a shark, mustn't it?" She turned a troubled face to Mr. Bill.

"They sound and look to me more like a fraternity initiation than anything else," said puzzled Mr. Bill. "Perhaps they don't mean what we mean when we say 'shark.' Perhaps 'shark' is the Sunshine Island word for hello!"

"Oh!" Tessie looked up at him with eyes full of wonder and admiration. "I do think you are the most wonderful man in the world! No one else would ever have thought of that!"

"Oh, I don't know," Mr. Bill murmured modestly. "But it might be true, you know."

"I'm sure it's true!" exclaimed Tessie eagerly.

X

Tessie really did not think much about Ka-kee-ta and his excited exclamations. She had too much to do to guess conundrums. Never was there a busier queen. The publicity the newspapers gave her brought new duties every day.

"You can't refuse," Norah Lee told her firmly. Norah had been loaned to the Sunshine Islands by the Evergreen and was taking her new work very seriously. "You want to advertise your kingdom, don't you? Make people know about it? I dare say there are thousands in Waloo this minute who have never heard of it, in spite of the corking stories the newspapers are giving you. Every one doesn't read every paper, and if you aren't in all the papers some people will miss knowing about you. It's your duty as a queen to make the Sunshine Islands the most talked about place in the world."

Put that way Tessie could not refuse, and she graciously permitted herself to be photographed and interviewed until every daily newspaper made a story of Queen Teresa and her islands as much a part of its daily routine as the sport page or the stock reports. "Our Queen," the _Gazette_ proudly called her, because she had made her first appearance in the _Gazette_.

She kept her promise to Mr. Kingley, and with Ka-kee-ta--his ax polished to silver brightness--stood in the basement of the Evergreen behind the familiar counter stocked high with aluminum. She might be the same little Tessie at heart, but outwardly there was a vast difference. She looked like a princess playing at being a salesgirl for her gown was of black silk crepe instead of cheap sateen, her hair was done in the simple fashion approved by Miss Morley, and at Mr. Kingley's request around her neck hung the Tear of God in its fiber lace. No one scolded her if she made a mistake. Indeed, Mr. Kingley had craftily minimized her chance to make a mistake by decreeing that she should only take the order and hand the parcel to the purchaser, the other girls could make out the sales-slips. And the basement was mobbed with purchasers.

"She's doing it for the shoe fund of her new kingdom," was a whisper frequently heard among them. "And no wonder!" would be the sympathetic rejoinder when Ka-kee-ta's bare feet were seen.

"I'll keep this all my life!" exclaimed a well-cushioned, warm-hearted woman. "I'll hand it down to my grandchildren," she promised tearfully. "To think a real queen sold it to me!"

"You're such a beautiful queen!" wept another emotional creature. "I read every word about you!"

Norah Lee watched the crowd from a sheltered corner, where Joe Cary found her.

"Hello!" he said. "Can't keep away from the old home, can you? May I say we miss you like the dickens up on the fifth." And he grinned as if he had missed her.

"I'm glad," Norah said simply, although she flushed a bit. "One likes to be missed. You are getting mighty good publicity these days. The Evergreen is all over all the papers."

"Don't blame me," begged Joe. "I don't believe in exploiting a little girl even if she is unfortunate enough to be the queen of a cannibal island, and even if it does put the Evergreen all over all the papers. I have a conscience tucked away somewhere about me!" he told her proudly, as if a conscience was a rare and valuable treasure. "How do you like your new job?" he asked curiously.

She laughed. She was a tall slim girl with jolly brown eyes and a jolly laugh. She and Joe had been in the same office for a year and Joe admired her immensely, but Norah thought her work was the most important thing in the world. She had not been pleased when she was loaned to the Queen of the Sunshine Islands, but the first basketful of mail had interested her, and she was still interested in the strange letters which came to Queen Teresa. So she laughed when Joe asked her about her new job.

"It is amusing," she said. "And surprising. I never knew there were so many people who want something for nothing. Miss Gilfooly is a dear little thing, isn't she? She accepts all the attention and admiration she is receiving without a question. She hasn't an analytical mind, has she? She never questions, she just accepts. I can't understand that! I would be just one huge interrogation point. The whole thing is so strange that sometimes I wonder--" She hesitated and looked oddly at Joe.

Joe looked oddly at her. "Sometimes I wonder, too," he said. "I don't understand it at all, but I'll tell you this, Miss Lee, if any one tries to play tricks on Tessie Gilfooly, he will have to answer to me!"

She nodded. "You're in love with her, aren't you?" As soon as the words slipped over her lips she turned crimson and stammered. "I beg your pardon! Don't tell me, please! It isn't any of my business!"

"Pooh!" exclaimed straightforward Joe. "I would just as soon tell the world. Of course I'm in love with her and with Granny and Johnny, the best of Boy Scouts. And that's why I say if any one gets gay with Tessie, I'll have something to say."

"Would you dare?" She seemed pleased to hear that he was in love with Granny and Johnny as well as with Tessie. But she looked not at Joe, but at the owner of the Evergreen, who had come down to the basement to watch a queen sell his aluminum.

"Pooh!" exclaimed Joe again. "You bet I'd dare! I'm not going to stay here all my life anyway. I've got a chance to go in with the World Wide Agency, and I guess that will push me ahead faster than the Evergreen. I'm just waiting until this queen business is over, and then I'll leave."

"Oh!" Norah Lee stared at him with big covetous eyes. "The World Wide!" She was frankly and honestly envious. "But if Miss Gilfooly goes to the Sunshine Islands?"

He laughed strangely. "Sometimes I wonder if there are any Sunshine Islands," he said scornfully, although he had read several of Tessie's library books and knew very well that there were Sunshine Islands, six of them.

"Why--why--" she stammered. "What do you mean?" She was so eager to hear what he meant that she drew closer, and Mr. Kingley found them with their heads together in business hours.

"Come, come, Cary!" he said sharply. "Have you finished that sketch?" For he had sent Joe to the basement to sketch the queen, not to talk to the queen's secretary.

Mr. Kingley was proud of his business acumen as he looked around the crowded basement. It was not every man who would have secured so much publicity in the discovery of a queen in a store basement. And how the store would benefit by his broad vision! There would not be enough aluminum in the Evergreen or in the city even, if the demand kept increasing as it had increased since the sale began. Tessie would have to shift to granite wear, and the excited women, who pressed so close to her, would never know the difference, although he would have the change announced in Mr. Walker's loudly penetrating voice. Mr. Kingley especially approved of Ka-kee-ta and his ax. They seemed to give an atmosphere of reality to the royalty in the Evergreen basement. Yes, the store would profit immensely by this sale. And Tessie would do well, too. She would have some more of that wonderful free publicity. He would guarantee that it would be nation-wide. And her per cent of the sales, small as he had been able to make it, would give her a good sum for the shoe fund for the orphans of the Sunshine Islands.

"Choose something for the kids," Norah Lee had advised when they had talked of the beneficiary. "Children appeal to every one, and you'll arouse more interest if you announce that you are selling aluminum to help the orphans of the islands than if you let it be whispered about that you are doing it to advertise Mr. Kingley."

So Tessie smiled and handed out parcel after parcel until one o'clock, when Mr. Bill appeared, as the hour struck, to take her home. He grinned at the crowd and diffidently suggested that Tessie would lunch with him. Tessie drew a deep breath and tried to keep the rapid beating of her heart out of her voice.

"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. "Could we have it here?" For never, in the many months she had been at the Evergreen, had she been able to eat as much as a bowl of chicken soup in the blue-and-gold tea-room on the fifth floor. Prices were too high and Tessie's finances were too low. She could obtain more for her fifteen or twenty cents at the cafeteria in the next block, but that fact only made her more eager to lunch at the Evergreen. Her little face turned quite pink as she spoke of it.

"Sure we can!" declared Mr. Bill, proud to have the Evergreen chosen, and proud of Tessie for choosing it. "I wish," he added frankly, "that we could dispense with the bodyguard!" He looked scornfully at Ka-kee-ta, although Ka-kee-ta had attracted almost as much attention as his royal mistress. "Isn't the store detective enough?" he grinned.

"I should hope so," sighed Tessie, and she frowned and turned her back to her bodyguard. "It does seem as if I didn't need to be protected when I'm with friends. I hate it!"

"Of course you do. But wait a minute! I have an idea!" He scowled as he developed his idea, and then began to issue orders. "Miss Lee," he said crisply, "you take Ka-kee-ta home. I'll bring Miss Gilfooly later." He turned to Ka-kee-ta and spoke as a general in command of an army. "Go with Miss Lee. Your queen orders it. I will guard her. Come on," he told Tessie. "Let's get a move on before he realizes he is going to be left behind."

She snatched her gloves and bag from the arrogant cashgirl, who had stood beside her to hold them, and ran away with him, the proudest, happiest queen in the world, while Norah Lee, sympathetic and resourceful, diverted Ka-kee-ta's attention by leading him to a rack where there was a splendid array of axes of all kinds. Ka-kee-ta had never seen so many. His eyes glistened, and he never noticed that his queen had slipped away.

Tessie's eyes glistened, too. To think that she was to lunch with Mr. Bill in the Evergreen tea-room. She could scarcely believe it, even when she was seated at a round table in a corner of the room with Mr. Bill smiling triumphantly at her.

"Well!" he exclaimed proudly. "I managed that all right!"

Tessie smiled at him. "You're wonderful!" she said slowly, as if the words were sweet to her quivering lips.

They were sweet to Mr. Bill's ears, also, and he blushed awkwardly. "Not half as wonderful as you are," he stammered. "You--you're adorable, you know!" And he gazed deep into her big blue eyes.

"Have you given your order?" asked a waitress crisply, for patrons were patrons, and orders were that no one was to be allowed to linger during the rush hour, every one was to be hurried through.

"All right," mumbled Mr. Bill, when he was reminded that he was in the tea-room instead of in Paradise. "What will you have?" he asked Tessie, and the worshiping note in his voice made the waitress turn a bright and vivid green with envy.

"You choose," begged Tessie in a shaking voice. She was afraid of a menu card, and she would far rather listen to Mr. Bill order anything than brave its dangers.

"I'll give you what my sister likes," suggested Mr. Bill after a fruitless effort to find food suitable for royalty. "I suppose all girls like the same things." He gave the order to the waitress, and finished it with a snap which meant, "Now, for heaven's sake, go away and leave us alone."

Every one in the big blue-and-gold room knew that the pretty young girl at the corner table with the son of the owner of the Evergreen, was the Queen of the Sunshine Islands, and many admiring and more envious glances were cast toward her. There was not a girl there who would have refused to give her dearest possessions, all of her possessions, to step into Tessie's shoes, the high-heeled, narrow-toed shoes Tessie wore in defiance of Miss Morley's earnest advice. Think of being a queen and of lunching with young Bill Kingley! Surely the gods crammed the measure full to overflowing for some people. And although the room was decorated entirely in blue and gold it seemed all green, and far more anarchists went out of it that day than had come into it.

Before Tessie and Mr. Bill had reached the nut ice cream with hot chocolate sauce which was the beloved of Mr. Bill's sister, there was a stir and a bustle and Ka-kee-ta shot into the room, breathing hard and glaring defiance at the head waitress, who had vainly tried to persuade him to check his ax at the door. With a snort of satisfaction, he slipped behind Tessie's chair.

"Oh, dear!" Tessie was almost in tears. "Here he is again!"

"We had a few minutes alone," reminded Mr. Bill, trying to believe that half a loaf of bread is considerably better than no bread. "Why did you come back, Ka-kee-ta?" he asked the bodyguard sternly. "Didn't I tell you I would look after the queen?"

"The Tear of God," rumbled Ka-kee-ta, as if the Tear of God was all that counted and queens were less than nothing. "The Tear of God!"

Tessie's hand went involuntarily to her neck. The Tear of God was there. What did Ka-kee-ta mean?

"The shark!" muttered Ka-kee-ta, and he shook his head and flourished his ax, and muttered words in a strange tongue.

It was just as well for "the shark," whoever or whatever he was, that he was not in the Evergreen tea-room at that moment, for Ka-kee-ta would have made short work of him. He growled and rumbled fiercely.

"I wish I knew what he meant!" murmured Tessie, for she felt that she should know what her bodyguard meant.

But Mr. Bill, wonderful as he was, could not tell her. He could only look at her and say again that she was adorable. Tessie moved impatiently. Joe Cary would have told her what Ka-kee-ta meant. Joe always had an answer when she questioned him. Could it be possible that Mr. Bill was not as clever as Joe Cary? But of course he was! Mr. Bill was quite the most wonderful man in the world. She smiled at him shyly.

XI

Ka-kee-ta with his ax and a proud tilt to his frizzled head became a familiar sight in Waloo. He caused more excitement and roused more interest than the queen.

"Bring your bodyguard with you," begged the president of the Home for Aged Women, when Tessie consented to appear at an entertainment the directors had arranged to increase its revenue.

"And do please have your picturesque guard come, too," coaxed the committee from the Junior League, which had invited Tessie to open the ball which the League gave every year to raise funds for its philanthropic work.

So Ka-kee-ta, in his blue clothes, his hair freshly oiled, his tattooed face oiled also, so that he was redolent of rancid cocoanut, his ax in his hand, stood in the back of the royal box, where Granny, in smart black lace and jet beads, and Johnny, in a new scout uniform, and Tessie, wearing a wonderful dancing frock of blue and silver, were the cynosure of all eyes.

When Tessi