Although Mr. Kingley posted a notice where every one could see it, to the effect that the man who had lost a black string tie at the banquet could obtain the same by calling at the office and explaining how it came to be in Ka-kee-ta's fist, no one appeared to claim the silk. Indeed, it was not long before Mr. Kingley and a majority of the guests thought that Tessie must have imagined that some one had tried to choke her, in an attempt to steal the Tear of God.
"She was excited!" they said indulgently. "And no wonder! But it is ridiculous to think that any one would try to steal the royal jewel, when the queen was surrounded by friends and with her bodyguard and his ax behind her."
"You can't tell friend from foe in the dark, and when you are with friends you are not looking for enemies," Joe Cary told them bluntly. He was perhaps the only one who believed that Tessie was telling the truth, when she said that when the lights went out a strong arm had caught her and pulled her from the table, and then Ka-kee-ta had snatched her and thrust her behind him.
"He can see in the dark!" she insisted with a shiver. "Just like a cat!"
"You dreamed it," young Mr. Bill said with a grin. "When the lights went out you were scared, and screamed, and Ka-kee-ta pulled you behind him. That's the way it was!"
"Was it?" But Tessie was not sure. The clasp of that strong arm had been too real for any dream. She could still feel the pull of the fiber that had held the Tear of God about her neck.
"No, it wasn't!" contradicted Joe. "You are dead right, Tessie. Some one did try to take your jewel from you."
"How do you know? You were at the other end of the room!" Mr. Bill regarded him with scorn, because Joe thought he knew so much when Mr. Bill, who had been sitting right next to Tessie, knew so little.
"I know all right!" There was a confidence in Joe's voice which was convincing. "I knew as soon as the fellow touched you, Tess, and I was coming to you even before you screamed. Ask Norah Lee! I bumped against her when I jumped up. You know when the lights went on I was at your place!"
"That's true!" agreed Granny. "He was just beside me!"
Tessie looked frightened. Her lip quivered. "But why should any one want to kidnap me?" she faltered. "I haven't done anything!" Shelooked at Mr. Bill, but when he did not tell her, she turned to Joe.
"Yes, you have done something," Joe told her bluntly. "You've become Queen of the Sunshine Islands." Trust Joe to find a reason. Joe always had a reason. That was why Tessie had quarreled with him so often. She usually hated his reason. "You told me yourself that Mr. Marvin said there was a bunch of people, Sons of Sunshine they call themselves, who want a native ruler. They don't want a white queen. I bet this kidnaper was a Sunshine Son who wanted that royal jewel, and if he could get you with it, he would shut you up until you consented to abdicate in favor of a native!" There was a grim, triumphant smile on Joe's lips as he elaborated his reason.
"Such rot!" Mr. Bill was thoroughly disgusted with Joe's reason. It was too melodramatic to happen anywhere but on the moving picture screen.
"Oh, Joe!" Tessie whimpered and caught his arm. "Would any one do that?"
"A Son of Sunshine would!" declared Joe. "I say, Tessie, why do you want to be the queen of those cannibal islands?" He sneered at the islands.
"Why—why I have to be," stammered Tessie, confused by the direct question. "Uncle Pete left me the islands and made me the queen. Ican't help it, can I?" She appealed to Mr. Bill.
"Of course you can't!" He glared at Joe. How dared Joe insinuate that Tessie could help it. "You can't throw away a kingdom. No one would!"
"Pooh!" sniffed Joe. "Half a dozen islands overrun with naked cannibals!" It sounded as if Joe had a very small opinion of Tessie's kingdom. "The first thing you know, they'll eat you," he prophesied gloomily before he laughed. It was so ridiculous to think of any one, even a hungry cannibal, eating little Tessie.
Tessie screamed. Mr. Bill promptly put his arm around her. He turned fiercely to Joe.
"Look here, Cary!" he began furiously. "Mind your words when you talk to the queen!"
"Queen!" Joe Cary actually laughed. "Queen!" he repeated.
Tessie pulled herself from Mr. Bill's protecting arm. How splendid Mr. Bill was and how—"Joe Cary!" she gasped, pink with indignation.
"Cary!" exclaimed Mr. Bill, even more indignant than Tessie.
Joe's face sobered as he looked from Tessie to Mr. Bill.
"Pooh!" he said again. "What do kings and queens amount to now? They're being knocked off their thrones pretty fast. Look at Russia and Germany! And at the best, they were never anything but a fairy tale. Keep your eyes on theother countries, on England and Italy and Spain, and some day you'll see things happen there. People are learning that they can pay too much for a figurehead and a pageant. An honest workingman is worth all the kings in the world. You know that, Tess! At least you used to know it. I told you. And just because your Uncle Pete was washed up on the Sunshine Islands, and was able to stop the Sunshine king's toothache the king adopted him and left him the islands. As if any one had the right to will human beings to any man! The natives were fools to accept him. You know they were! And as for your Uncle Pete, you'll be wise if you don't inquire about his life on the islands. Filthy brute!" Joe quite forgot himself as he talked about kings and queens.
"Why, Joe Cary!" Tessie could scarcely speak. But she could look, and her eyes flashed fire at the man who dared to stand before her and call her royal uncle names. What would Granny say? She was glad that Granny hadn't heard him.
"Look here, Cary, you can't slander the dead!" exclaimed Mr. Bill indignantly. "And keep your mouth shut about things you don't know," he advised curtly.
"Know!" Joe repeated the word scornfully. "I bet I know more about the Sunshine Islands than the Queen there!" He nodded at big-eyed Tessie. "I've made it my business to know.Every one else has been so wrapped up in the fact that Tess was a Queen that they haven't cared if her kingdom was only half a dozen little islands inhabited by cannibals."
"They're not cannibals now!" declared Tessie.
"They were! Your Uncle Pete was almost eaten by them!"
"They've been civilized and Christianized!" insisted Tessie. "Uncle Bill built a church. It has a corrugated tin roof, and when the sun shines on it the natives think it's silver. The Home of the Silver God, they call it. Ka-kee-ta told me!" She flashed an indignant glance at the scoffer.
"That shows how civilized and Christianized they are," laughed Joe. He was determined to express his thoughts for at least once. "Your Uncle Pete built a motion picture theater, too, Tess, and it saved him from a revolution. But once a cannibal always a cannibal. It's in their blood, and it will take more than one generation to get it out. I wish you'd give up the job. You don't want those islands. You can't live on them! Give them up!"
"Give them up!" Tessie could not believe her own pink ears.
"Give them up!" Mr. Bill echoed the words incredulously.
"You bet! You won't dare live there. The Sons of Sunshine won't let you, and they're right. You don't belong there. Show your sense of truthand right and give them up. Let the natives elect their own ruler. It's the only fair way," begged Joe.
"I suppose you'd like me to go back to selling aluminum in the Evergreen!" Tessie proved that she could be as scornful as she could be sweet and shy. But her scorn did not make any impression on Joe.
"I would!" he declared. "I'd love to see you back there in your little black dress earning your own way. And I'd love to have you to walk home with again. And I'd love to go in to a dinner of Granny's boiled beef and raisin pie again. I'd like to go back to where we were when you heard you were a queen! Can't you see, Tess," he pleaded, "that there isn't anything in this queen business any more? Come on and give it up!"
"You're a socialist!" stammered Mr. Bill, so amazed at such plain speaking that he could do nothing but stammer. "You're a rank anarchist!"
Joe tore his eyes from indignant Tessie to stammering Mr. Bill. "If you think that a hatred of queens—white girl queens—for cannibal islands is socialism then I am a socialist," he said boldly. "What do you know about Tessie?" he demanded abruptly. "You never saw her until this musical-comedy-queen business began."
This was so true that Mr. Bill and Tessie both blushed.
"Well, I see her now," Mr. Bill managed to say. "And I'll help her be a Queen. The idea of asking any one to give up a kingdom! I never heard of such an absurd thing in my life!" It was so absurd that he laughed.
"If she doesn't give it up I'll bet it will be taken from her," prophesied Joe. "The Sons of Sunshine are after her. And they are after the Tear of God, too. You saw that gink on the porch the night Tess heard she was a queen. I'll bet he was a Son of Sunshine! And if you ever find anything about that man last night you'll find he was a Sunshine Son too, or I'm a goat! The third time he may get to you, and then you'll remember what I said," he told Tessie gloomily.
But Tessie had pulled herself together, and now she laughed at his gloomy prophecies. She did not believe them. How could she when Mr. Bill, who knew so much more of the world than Joe Cary, told her that what Joe said was ridiculous. Just what you might expect from a rank anarchist. But she stopped laughing when Joe looked straight into her blue eyes and said very soberly, far more soberly than he had spoken before: "But even if you are a fool, Tess, I'll stand by you. I'll help you! You can always count on me!"
"Well, upon my word!" gasped Tessie, her eyes following him as he walked away. "The idea of Joe Cary talking to me like that!"
"Yes, the very idea," agreed Mr. Bill. "Butdon't think of it another minute! The fellow's cracked. I'll bet Dad doesn't know what a socialist he is!"
"You wouldn't tell," begged Tessie in a panic, for if Joe lost his position in the Evergreen what would he do? He hadn't inherited an island kingdom and even if he had— She shook her head. She couldn't understand Joe.
"No, of course I shan't tell!" Mr. Bill spoke loftily, as if Tessie should have known that he did not tell tales. "Give those fellows rope enough and they hang themselves. He's so green with envy that he isn't a king that he can't do anything but rant."
"I don't think it was that!" frowned honest little Tessie. "I don't think Joe would ever want to be king of any island!"
"Try him!" advised Mr. Bill scornfully. "Just try him. I never knew a socialist to keep on spouting socialistic rot after he had money to buy him decent food and clothes and a bath. But don't let's talk about him! I'm glad you're a queen. It's the most romantic thing I ever heard, and I'm strong for romance. I used to think there wasn't any left in the world." He smiled at Tessie, who looked the very flower of romance. "I'm darned glad you're a queen!" he said fervently.
"I'm glad, too," murmured Tessie, quite ready to forget Joe Cary. "I don't care what Joe Carysaid! And I am going to try and be a good queen and do my duty by my people! Be simple and honest, is what Madame Cabot said."
"Of course you are! But what is there in this Sons of Sunshine business?" curiously. "Anything?"
"I'm afraid there is!" A little frown broke the pretty curve of Tessie's eyebrows. "It's true. Joe is right that some of the people want a native ruler. They rebelled against Uncle Pete, but he kept them down. Now that he is gone they don't want a white queen. They aren't the best people, Ka-kee-ta said," she explained apologetically. "They're the—the lower classes. And they haven't seen me! They don't know how I plan to help them!"
"They'll adore you the minute they do see you!" declared Mr. Bill unsteadily.
"Oh, I hope they will!" faltered blushing Tessie.
"Of course they will! Didn't I?" Mr. Bill caught her hand and squeezed it hard.
Joe Cary's rude and reckless words had an effect, although perhaps not the one he had hoped. But they did make Tessie think of something besides Mr. Bill, her new frocks and her new pleasures. The interruption of the Evergreen banquet did not bother her long, for that was a problem for the store detective to solve. But Joe Cary made her realize that the Sunshine Islands were more than a throne and a bank for their queen. It was odd that, when Tessie returned to the Waloo, she should find Granny reading one of the big books in which there was an entire chapter devoted to "The Pearl of the Pacific—The Sunshine Islands." Granny looked up from a picture of sea and palms when Tessie came in.
"Tessie," she began at once, "are you sure you're going to like being a queen for a lot of naked cannibals?"
"Why, Granny!" Tessie stood still and stared at her. What did Granny mean? Of course Joe Cary had been talking to her, and for a moment Tessie hated him. She didn't care if he had been her only friend when she was a salesgirl at the Evergreen. She quite forgot that he had taken her to a moving-picture show once in two weeks."What's the matter now?" she asked impatiently. "Have people been complaining about Ka-kee-ta again?" For there were people who had complained of Ka-kee-ta, and it must be confessed that it was disconcerting to a timid woman, or even a brave man, to walk down a dimly lighted corridor and find oneself face to face with a bare-footed colored man, in loosely fitting blue clothes; a man with a tattooed nose and frizzled hair stiffened with cocoanut oil, and carrying a shining ax. Tessie herself would have shrieked if she had come upon such a man in a dimly lighted corridor. As it was, she often felt like screaming when she saw him, and just now, after her talk with Joe, she was impatient. "What is it now, Granny?" she wanted to know. A lot of her nervous impatience was in her voice as she stood in front of Granny, and there was more nervous impatience in her frowning little face.
Granny looked up and sighed as she saw the slim little creature in a very modish frock and a very modish hat. Tessie was very, very different from the shabby little girl in the cheap black cotton dress, but that was no reason why Granny should sigh mournfully as she looked at her. Surely Granny did not want Tessie to be the shabby little girl of those old days!
"I was just wondering," Granny said meekly, "as I read this book if you had learned to eat raw fish yet?"
An angry flush stained Tessie's face, and she stamped her high-heeled shoe.
"No, I don't like raw fish!" she cried stormily. "And I don't ever expect to like raw fish! Why should I? Can't I have somebody cook fish for me?" she demanded haughtily.
"In the Sunshine Islands it's the custom to eat it raw," Granny said very gently, for she could recognize the beginning of a tantrum as well as any one. "And there isn't anything that's harder to change than a custom. When I read about the food and some other things in this book, and looked at a few of these pictures, I got to wondering how we are going to like those islands and the customs the people have there. You know, Tessie," she went on, when Tessie said never a word, but just stood sulkily tapping the rug with the pointed toe of her shoe, "when you came home from the Evergreen that day and told me about your Uncle Pete and how he had died and made you a queen, I couldn't think of anything but how wonderful it was. My boy a king! And my girl a queen! And I pictured those Sunshine Islands like England and Italy, and perhaps a little like the United States, even if the United States ain't got crowned kings and queens. It was so wonderful that I was all puffed up like bread sponge. But since we came to the Waloo, and I got so much time, no washing or cooking to do, I've looked into some of these books and talked toKa-kee-ta as much as a body can talk to a critter that don't know more than the rudiments of real language, and I can't find that these islands are like any place I ever heard of. I don't know as we're going to like them. The folks don't all wear clothes," she confided to Tessie in a dubious whisper.
"I can teach them to wear clothes," Tessie said coldly. "I've talked to Mr. Kingley, and he's going to send me some clothes from the Evergreen. We're going to begin with bathing suits."
"Mr. Kingley's a real business man, ain't he? Always thinking of the Evergreen!" Granny had to admire Mr. Kingley's ability to think of his business at all times. She went on a bit sarcastically. "And is young Mr. Bill going to take charge and open a branch in the islands? It won't pay in your lifetime, Tessie. You mustn't count on it! It'll take more than Mr. Kingley's say-so to put even bathing suits on folks that don't wear anything but a bit of fringe around their waists. And it ain't only clothes," she added mournfully. "It's white ants and centipedes and snakes and sharks and——"
"For goodness sakes, Granny!" Tessie jumped when Granny spoke of sharks, and she was almost at the end of her patience when there was a loud thump on the door. "I do wish," exclaimed Tessie, glad of a legitimate reason to let Granny see that she had reached the end of her patience,"that Ka-kee-ta would learn to knock. I hate to hear him hit the door with his old ax!"
"That's just what I've been telling you," began Granny. "You ain't going to like the Sunshine Islands' way of doing things."
But Tessie did not listen to her. She walked to the door and threw it wide open. "Ka-kee-ta," she began sternly, but instead of facing Ka-kee-ta she looked at a fat man with a light, oh very light, hair, and a big nose. "Oh," Tessie murmured feebly. "Oh!"
"Queen Teresa?" asked the stranger eagerly, although he knew very well that she was Queen Teresa. "Of the Sunshine Islands?" He came into the room and shut the door carefully behind him.
A great hope dashed into Tessie's mind. He was the special representative from the Sunshine Islands, the man who was to escort her to her kingdom in obedience to the orders in her Uncle Pete's last will and testament. Of course he was the special representative. In spite of the fact that he made Tessie think that he must be made of tubs, large and small, neatly piled upon one another. He had an air of great assurance and greater authority. He could tell her all about the islands and that it would not be necessary for her to eat native food nor to have Ka-kee-ta bang on the door with his ax. He would tell her everything. He looked as full of information as a completeset of encyclopedia. And when he spoke, she was sure he was the special representative, for he said smilingly, ingratiatingly, "I have come to talk to you about the Sunshine Islands."
"Is that so!" exclaimed the Queen of the Sunshine Islands. She looked triumphantly at Granny. "Won't you sit down?" She hesitated in choosing a chair for herself and at last took one which stood near Granny. After she was seated in it she moved it even closer to Granny as if she wanted her comfort or protection.
"You must think it is very romantic to be a queen," went on the tublike man, still smiling pleasantly. "And it is romantic! I suppose you picture your kingdom as another England or Spain or——"
"I don't," interrupted Granny. "Not any more. I might as well confess that at first I did that very thing, but I've just read a few things in these books about the Sunshine Islands, and I know now that they ain't a bit like England or even Spain. I was just telling Tessie—the queen—that when Ka-kee-ta knocked on the door with his ax."
"You are quite right!" He smiled at Granny and nodded his white thatched head. "But I can tell you much more than you will find in any book. To begin with, the pleasant parts of the islands are beautiful, very beautiful. They are not large; you could crowd the half a dozen into the state of Minnesota and have room to spare.But the climate! Ah, the climate! It is perfect! The islands are south of Hawaii, you know, but nearer the United States—nearer Mexico would be more correct—but it is the same thing. They are coral islands with cocoanut palms and banana and breadfruit trees. The villages are made up of palm leaf huts with a larger hut on the largest island for the ruler."
"Isn't there any electric light or any gas or any city water?" asked Granny, who could not believe that there was any place without those three necessities.
"There is not. But there is a sky bluer than any sky you ever saw, and the water in the lagoon is as clear as crystal and of a wonderful blue-green color. The coral sand is so white that it makes your eyes ache. The Sunshine Islands are rarely beautiful, but they are not convenient. It would be safe to say that they have not a single convenience," he insisted as Granny gasped and exclaimed:
"Not even in the king's palace?"
"Palace!" He laughed scornfully almost, as Joe Cary had laughed at kings and palaces. "Palm-leaf huts," he explained. "And the people—you know they are cannibals?" He looked at Tessie, as if he were vastly amused to know that her people were cannibals.
"Not cannibals now," faltered Tessie, almost in tears to hear how unlike her dreams her kingdomwas. "Uncle Pete civilized them and showed them how wrong it was to eat each other."
"Not all," corrected the tubular blond. "The last election showed that one out of every two inhabitants was a conservative—a cannibal."
"Elections!" Tessie did not know that elections were held in the Sunshine Islands, and she wondered vaguely if she were a democrat or a republican. She knew she was not a conservative! if conservatives were cannibals.
"The islands are really no place for a white woman, for a young and beautiful white woman," the man said bluntly. He gazed at Tessie with such open admiration that she moved impatiently and wished that he would stop looking at her and look at Granny. "You can't live there, Miss Gilfooly—is that the name? I know. It's out of the question. I've spent months on Ta-ri-ha, that's the largest island, and I know what I'm talking about when I say it is no place for a white woman. A white man might keep the natives in hand if he were——"
"Big and strong and brutal," suggested Granny thoughtfully.
He turned to her. "I see you knew King Pete, madam?"
"I was his mother." Granny sighed as if she could remember times when she had found her son big and strong and brutal. "But if you don't think my granddaughter should live on her islandswhat do you think she should do with them?" Granny believed in the straight line. She had absolutely no use for that beautiful curved line we are taught to admire. Straight lines are so much more direct. She looked at the stranger, but she could not find any straight lines about him; he was all curves.
"Granny!" exclaimed Tessie indignantly. The idea of Granny speaking as if there was even a possibility that she would not go to the Sunshine Islands. In imagination Tessie saw herself on a great white ship which was drawing near a shore that bore a marked resemblance to the pictures she had seen of New York harbor. And she saw great throngs of natives clothed in queer shapeless garments—but fully clothed—and she heard their joyous shouts of welcome. She liked the picture her imagination showed her far better than she liked the one drawn by this white-headed stranger. In the back of her mind there was a faint memory of something unpleasant in connection with a fat, white-headed man with a big nose and freckles, but she could not think what it was while this man regarded her with such bright blue eyes. She wished she could, it might be easier to talk to him if she could remember.
"Who are you?" she asked suddenly, oddly uncomfortable under his steady, unblinking stare.
"My name is Pracht," he said frankly. "FredericPracht. I have lived in the Sunshine Islands for months. I knew King Pete very well."
"Pracht," meditated Granny. "That sounds like a German name."
He stopped smiling at Tessie to smile at Granny, and Tessie drew a deep breath of relief, as if at last she had more space about her.
"It is not strange that my name sounds German, because it is German," Mr. Pracht explained to Granny. "My great-grandfather came from Frankfort and settled in Pennsylvania. There are many German names in Pennsylvania."
"H-m," muttered Granny, and she regarded him gravely, as if she were not quite satisfied with the explanation, as if she suspected that it would not wear well—that it would shrink or fade. "My son Pete," she said slowly, "he inherited the islands, didn't he?"
"From the old king. He cured the old king's toothache."
"Didn't the old king have any children?" Even if she suspected that his information might not wear well, Granny thought it was just as well to obtain as much of it as she could.
"He had twenty-three."
"Twenty-three children!" Granny gasped. She had known large families in her day, but twenty-three children——
"Seventeen girls and six boys," was the readyresponse. "And thirty-one grandchildren. I don't exactly know how many great-grandchildren there are."
"Never mind." The old king's children interested Granny far more than his great grandchildren. "When there were twenty-three children, why did the old king leave his kingdom to my son Pete?" That was the question which did interest her, and while a toothache cure should be paid for, a kingdom did seem rather a large price.
Mr. Pracht shrugged his shoulders. "That is what the twenty-three children would like to know. They declare that King Pete hypnotized their father, or, as they put it, placed him under a spell. My private opinion is that the old king quarreled with his family until he hated every one of his twenty-three children. And they hated him. They hated each other, too, until their father died and they came together to fight his successor. That's why the Sons of Sunshine organized. You've heard of them?" He turned his bright blue eyes on Tessie again.
She nodded, but did not speak. Granny did not speak either for a moment; then she said slowly, as if she were trying to visualize her words:
"That's quite a family. Twenty-three children!"
"The old man had three wives," Mr. Pracht said with a little laugh.
"Three! Do you mean that a man can havemore than one wife in my granddaughter's kingdom?" If Granny's gray hair had not been held by a net, it would have risen with horror at such a thought.
"A man can have as many wives as he can buy," explained Mr. Pracht. "You remember I told you the islands were not like Minnesota and Waloo." He laughed and showed two rows of big white teeth.
"They don't seem to be," murmured Granny, while Tessie gasped. "I must confess I am surprised. Ain't you surprised, Tessie, to hear all this? I had my suspicions after I got over my first surprise and had time to remember Pete, and to look into these books. But I thought you were going to tell us what you thought Tessie should do with these islands which her Uncle Pete left her when he died?" she said suddenly.
"There is but one thing to do," Mr. Pracht told her so suddenly and emphatically that she knew that he had given the question some study. He was not offering her any made-while-you-wait opinion. She should sell her rights in them, and sell as soon as she can. "Real estate values vary, you know, and just at present Miss Gilfooly could obtain a very good price. If she waits I am afraid she will lose money. If she sells her rights at once, I am quite sure that she will obtain enough to enable her to live like a queen wherever shepleases." He smiled pleasantly at Tessie, but Tessie frowned.
"I wouldn't be a queen if I sold my islands," she objected. Already her head felt bare, as if a crown had been torn from it.
"Surely you would be a queen. A queen doesn't lose her title when she loses her kingdom," declared Mr. Pracht, quick to see that honors meant more to Tessie just then than lands. "Look at Kaiser Bill. And the French empress who died the other day. So long as you live, you will be Queen Teresa of the Sunshine Islands. But take my word for it that you will find it much pleasanter to be Queen Teresa in London or Paris, or even in Waloo, than you would in the Sunshine Islands. I can't think of a thing you would like there—not one thing."
"Uncle Pete liked them!" flared Tessie, indignant at such contemptuous scorn of her kingdom. "He liked them well enough to live there years and years."
"He probably had his reasons." There was a significance in Mr. Pracht's smooth voice that made Granny and Tessie look at each other. "And he was a man," went on Mr. Pracht. "He never hesitated when it was necessary to put down rebellion."
"I bet he didn't!" agreed Granny.
"And you know there is a strong desire for a native ruler? The Sons of Sunshine are behindit. They will never permit you to land without a fight. And you wouldn't be able to hold your throne," he grinned, "without bloodshed, I know!" And he told Tessie more about her kingdom—disagreeable things. By the time he finished Tessie was almost in tears.
"I am prepared to offer you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for your rights in the Sunshine Islands," he said at last.
"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!" Tessie was on her feet and staring at him indignantly.
"The lawyer said they were worth a million pounds!" Granny said sharply. Granny had learned to bargain in the old days, and some lessons are never forgotten.
"A million pounds!" Mr. Pracht repeated. "That sounds like King Pete. He was not the man to put a low valuation on anything that belonged to him. But a million pounds! That is ridiculous! Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is far more than they are worth, but I want Miss Gilfooly to be comfortable and have some luxuries. I want her to have an income that will let her live anywhere!" His face wore the kindliest, the most benevolent of expressions as he turned it to Tessie.
Tessie did not like his benevolent expression any more than she had liked his admiring smile. The something in the back of her head whichconnected a fat, white-headed, big-nosed, freckled man with an unpleasant experience bothered her. She wished she could remember what it was.
"Are you the special representative my Uncle Pete said was to come for me?" she asked suddenly.
"Special representative!" he repeated, and there was a vague uncertainty in his voice which told Tessie at once that he knew even less of the special representative than she did.
Granny was still considering the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She sniffed at them.
"I never trust a man who pays more than a thing is worth," she contemptuously told Mr. Pracht. "There's always a nigger in the woodpile. Are you buying these islands for yourself?" she asked pleasantly, "or for the twenty-three children? Tessie would want to know who would look after the people if she should sell the islands."
"I sure would!" Tessie looked gratefully at Granny. Trust Granny to ask leading questions.
Mr. Pracht hesitated before he spoke in a most confidential manner, as if only to Granny and Tessie would he admit the truth. "I represent a syndicate which plans to develop the natural resources of the islands. The syndicate has no use for the title, so that Miss Gilfooly can remain a queen in name. And I can assure her that the people will be well looked after. I might possibly,"he frowned and spoke more slowly, "be able to offer two hundred and seventy-five thousand!" He looked at Tessie as if he had made a wonderful offer, one that she could not afford to refuse. Surely when she heard that sum she would jump up and exclaim: "Yes, thank you. You may have my kingdom for two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars!"
"Couldn't you make it three hundred thousand?" asked Granny, quite as if she were selling rags to the junk man and not bargaining with a syndicate for a kingdom.
He looked at her. "I should hate to say positively, but if that is the price Miss Gilfooly will accept, I might—yes!" He took a sudden determination. "I will assume the responsibility and offer you three hundred thousand dollars. It's a big price! The syndicate will lose money, but——"
"Bosh!" exclaimed Granny, and she rose to her feet and stood beside Tessie. "Bosh! Syndicates don't lose money! I don't know how Queen Teresa feels, but if I were in her shoes, I'd tell your syndicate to go to Jericho before I would sell an inch of my islands. That's what I'd do!" And she snapped her fingers in his face.
"Madam!" He jumped back indignantly. He turned to Tessie. After all the Sunshine Islands belonged to Tessie, not to her belligerent grandmother.
"Of course I shan't sell my islands!" declared Tessie, flushed and indignant, that he should really think she would. "I wouldn't sell them for a million! I have a duty to the people! It wouldn't be right to sell them!"
An ugly look crept into Mr. Pracht's blue eyes. "You can refuse if you wish," he said, and there was an ugly note in his voice, far different from his former suave, smooth manner. "I can only remind you again that the natives have sworn that they will never have another white ruler. And you will find that they will stop at nothing. They have several disagreeable customs in regard to those they consider usurpers. Boiling them in shark oil is perhaps the simplest!" He bowed triumphantly and walked toward the door.
"Is that so," remarked Granny coldly. "And may I ask you if you were at the Evergreen banquet for the queen the other evening?"
"Banquet?" he swung around and looked at her. There was an odd expression in his eyes.
"Yes, there was an unexpected guest who made things very disagreeable for a minute. You sound as if you might have been him."
He shook his head. "I have no time for social gatherings," he said coldly. "But Miss Gilfooly had better consider my offer. As I said, the natives will stop at nothing."
If he expected Tessie to call him back and whimper that she was afraid of the natives, andcouldn't he do something to protect her he was sadly disappointed. He found himself on the other side of the door without a word being spoken. As the door closed behind him Tessie turned to her grandmother.
"Granny," she wailed, "did you hear what he said?" She caught Granny's hand and held it tight.
"Sure, I heard what he said!" Granny put a protecting arm around her. "But I doubt if there is enough shark oil in the United States to boil anybody, my lamb. Don't you fret. Your Granny will take care of you!"
"I'm not fretting!" But she clung to Granny's hand. "And I'm glad he isn't one of my people! I wouldn't trust him! I don't like him!"
"I don't trust him, either. I bet he knows more about what happened at the Evergreen banquet than we do. You'll see. We'll know all about it some day. Did you take a good look at him, Tessie?"
Tessie nodded tearfully. "Fat and white, like a nasty worm," she gulped.
Granny added a feature to Tessie's sketch. "And a big nose! You remember it was a man with white hair and a big nose that stole the record of your ma's and pa's wedding. Don't you forget that, Tessie Gilfooly! That man tried to make us think he was honest, coming here and offering to buy your islands. But he ain't honest.You can tell that as soon as you look at him. There's something queer in this business, Tessie! I don't understand it, but you look out for that man. He's got a bad eye. Dear, dear, I wish Joe Cary was still boarding with us! I trusted Joe Cary!"
Tessie moved away impatiently, and then came back to kiss Granny's cheek. "Don't you fret, Granny," she said in her turn. "What could that Pracht man do to me?"
"He could kidnap you and turn you over to those cannibals!" Granny tremulously told her of one thing that Pracht could do. "And you heard how they treat rulers they don't like? I declare, Tessie, I wish your Uncle Pete had left those islands to an orphan asylum instead of to you! It ain't going to be all pleasure being a queen!"
In spite of her brave words, Tessie did not feel brave when she thought of Frederic Pracht and his threats. She shivered and turned pale, and there was a frightened look in her big blue eyes. She wondered if Mr. Pracht had told her the truth about the islands and the people and their customs—their barbarous customs.
She suddenly discovered that she knew almost nothing about the kingdom her Uncle Pete had left to her. She had been a queen for almost a month, and she had been so busy spending the island revenues that she had scarcely glanced in her library books. She blushed with shame. Joe Cary, who had no claim to the islands at all, knew far more about them than she did. He talked as if the Sons of Sunshine were like the I. W. W. or anarchists who threw bombs when and where they pleased. Now that she realized how ignorant she was, Tessie could not understand how she had been satisfied to know nothing. She had only been interested in spending the money Mr. Marvin had given her. She had not taken so much as a minute to learn anything about the history of the islands, nor anything about thepeople who lived on the islands. It wasn't right, she told herself with shame.
"I'm a rotten queen," she confessed to Granny in a disgust so deep that it colored her cheeks and brought a black frown to her smooth white forehead. "But I don't have to keep on being a rotten queen." And she flew to the telephone and called for Marvin, Phelps & Stokes and asked eagerly for Mr. Douglas—Mr. Gilbert Douglas.
"This is Qu—I mean this is Tessie Gilfooly," she corrected herself with a shamed little laugh, for in her present humble state of mind she did not feel that she had any right to call herself a queen.
"Hello! Your Majesty!" chuckled Bert. Tessie could hear him laugh over the wire, and the hearty chuckle cheered her. "What can I do for you to-day?"
"You can tell me if you have heard anything about the special representative from the Sunshine Islands." Tessie quickly told him what he could do for her. "It seems to me he should be here by now."
"That's a funny thing!" exclaimed Bert. "I just put on my hat to come over and tell you what we have heard of that very representative. He—" Bert hesitated and then went on reluctantly—"he is still in the islands."
"Still in the islands!" repeated Tessie faintly."Why—why—I thought he was to come at once!"
"He was captured by a bunch of rebels. Sons of Sunshine they call themselves," explained Bert slowly. He was finding that it was not nearly so pleasant to carry bad news as it had been to carry good news.
"My goodness gracious!" cried Tessie. "My gracious goodness! They won't hurt him, will they? They won't boil him in sh-shark oil?" Her voice shook as she asked the question, but of course Bert would tell her that it was ridiculous to think that any one would be treated in such a savage fashion in these civilized days.
But Bert hesitated. "Well," he said at last, "when you get down to brass tacks your people aren't much more than savages, Queen Teresa, and they do things in a savage way. I don't honestly think that they would boil any one in oil, but you never can tell what cannibals will do. Anyway the party that is in power—that was your uncle's party, you know, the same as our republicans, as I understand it—is doing everything to straighten matters and show the Sons of Sunshine that it will be to the advantage of the islands if King Pete's will is carried out. I expect the rebels will free the special representative at once and he will be along as soon as he can. You're not to worry. You're not on the islands.You're safe here in Waloo. You haven't anything to worry about."
"Haven't I?" quavered Tessie. "Did you hear what happened the other night at the Evergreen banquet? If it hadn't been for Ka-kee-ta, I would have been kidnaped. The store detective hasn't found out a thing, and Mr. Kingley thinks I imagined it. But I didn't. I didn't!" she insisted. "Even if I don't have to worry, I do. I can't help it! Do you know, Bert Douglas, that I don't know anything about those islands! Not a single solitary thing!"
"I don't know much!" Bert frankly admitted his ignorance, and he did not seem ashamed of it, but then Bert was not a king, he was only a lawyer. "I guess there isn't much to learn. You see, they were almost unknown until your Uncle Pete was washed up on them and put them on the map."
"You must have papers and things?" suggested Tessie, pinkly ashamed that she had not asked the question before.
"I'll gather up everything I can find and come right over," offered Bert eagerly. "Shall I?"
"Do!" begged Tessie. "I just can't wait another minute to learn all about them!"
She was a little disappointed in the big law firm of Marvin, Phelps & Stokes as she hung up the receiver. Surely some one in the office should have known about the property of aclient. She didn't believe that the lawyers knew as much as Joe Cary. Joe! She took the receiver from its hook again and asked Central to give her the Evergreen, please. When Central at last reluctantly connected her with the big department store, she breathlessly demanded Joe Cary.
"Hello, Joe!" she said as soon as she heard his friendly voice over the wire. "This is Tessie!"
"Hello, Tess! What do you want me to do?" For experience had taught Joe that when Tessie called him up it was because she wanted him to do something.
"I want you to come right over and tell me everything you know about these Sons of Sunshine!" Her voice quivered as she spoke of the Sons of Sunshine.
"What do you mean?" asked Joe sharply. "What have they been trying to do now?"
"My goodness!" Tessie was frightened. "You don't really think there are any of them in Waloo, do you? I thought you were jollying when you said the man who tried to take me from the Evergreen banquet was a Son of Sunshine. I never believed there were any of them in Waloo!" Her teeth chattered, and cold fingers seemed to be running up and down her spine.
"I don't jolly about serious things. I honestly believe that the man you found on the porch that night was a Sunshiner, and I am just as sure thatthe man who tried to rob you at the banquet was one, too. I can't prove it, and the store detective laughs at me, but I know I am right. Don't have anything to do with them, Tess. They're brutes! They wouldn't stop at anything!"
"I know!" impatiently. "And I'm scared to death, Joe Cary! I wish you'd come right over and tell me what you know!"
"I'll run up this evening."
"You tell Mr. Kingley I want to see you right away, and he'll let you come right away," guessed Tessie. She would die if she had to wait until evening.
"I shan't ask any favors of old Kingley," Joe told her stiffly.
"Oh, Joe!" Her breath caught in a sob. "Not when I ask you? Please, please? I'm frightened!" Her quivering voice told him how frightened she was.
"All right!" he said quickly. "I'll come over, but for heaven's sake keep your shirt on and don't lose your head!"
"I don't want to lose my head," she agreed meekly. "That's why I want you to come right over. And, Joe, you're a darling!"
"Oh, am I?" gruffly. "We'll see about that!"
The information Bert gathered proved to be most unsatisfactory to Tessie. It only told about Uncle Pete's will and certain properties which he possessed in the Hawaiian Islands. There wasscarcely a word about the people or the politics of the Sunshine Islands.
"You don't know as much as I do," complained Tessie, as she pushed the papers aside. She looked at him, and disappointment was written all over her face.
"No, I don't suppose I do! You've had Ka-kee-ta to tell you things. But I say, you're not really worrying, are you? You needn't because we are all going to stand by you. Mr. Marvin said the other day that he rather thought he would send me along when you go to the islands to see that everything is all right."
"Bert Douglas!" She stared at him and a little of the worry slipped from her eyes. "How perfectly wonderful! And perhaps Mr. Kingley will send Mr. Bill! Mr. Bill told me last night. His father wants him to look over the islands. With you and Mr. Bill everything will be perfect!"
"Sure to," agreed Bert, although he did look a trifle disappointed when he heard that Mr. Bill was to be a member of the royal party.
But Joe Cary was not so sure that Bert and Mr. Bill would make everything all right for Tessie. He shook his head.
"You have to remember that you will not be dealing with civilized people, Tessie," he said frowningly. "Oh, yes, some of them are civilized in a way, but from what I hear your Uncle Petewas as big a savage as any of them. He did build a church and import a missionary, but when the missionary disappeared he didn't send for another."
"What became of the missionary?" Tessie was afraid of the answer. Her red lips lost their color as she asked for it.
"Just as well not to ask too many questions," suggested Joe. "No one ever heard. He just disappeared. The Sons of Sunshine were organized to fight your Uncle Pete's revolutionary ideas, you know. Old customs was the war-cry. And they swear they will never have another white ruler. There is something back of it all that I can't get hold of yet and it means trouble. Your Uncle Pete should have known better than to have left you such a mess. His money was all right, but he didn't need to leave you his troubles. The natives will never accept you as their queen!"
"Ka-kee-ta did," Tessie tearfully reminded him.
"Ka-kee-ta was your Uncle Pete's tool and slave. He thought your Uncle Pete was a god, but I expect at heart Ka-kee-ta's still a savage. Don't you trust him. Hang it all! I wish you'd refuse to have anything to do with the darned old islands! I'm afraid for you!" And when Joe Cary was afraid, there was real cause for fear.
"I'm afraid too!" gulped Tessie, and impulsively she told him about Frederic Pracht and his offer and his threat.
"There it is!" exclaimed Joe. "They've begun, you see, and nobody knows where they will stop. They won't come out in the open. They fight in the dark. Tessie, you're so little and helpless and sweet!" His hand shot out to close on her fingers. "You can't fight them!"
But the touch of his fingers gave Tessie courage to stop whimpering and sit up straight. "I can!" she insisted, her head high. "I'm Irish, you know, Irish enough not to give in until I know I'm beaten. And I trust Uncle Pete. He wouldn't have left me the islands if he hadn't thought I could manage them. And I'll have Granny and Johnny! And Bert Douglas is going with us! And so is Mr. Bill! We ought to be able to handle a lot of ignorant natives!"
"Bill Kingley! Bert Douglas! What do they know about the Sunshine Islands? I suppose I'll have to go, too, Tessie! I can't let you take your old Granny without me! She's been too good to me," he explained. "Are you going to take Norah Lee, too?" He seemed to want to know just who would compose the party. He looked at her eagerly when he spoke of Norah.
"Of course. I'll have to have some one to answer my letters. It will be splendid to have you, Joe! I shan't worry another minute. You aresuch a comfort! Before you came I was scared to death, but now—" She caught his hands and squeezed them. "It's such fun to be a queen, Joe," she whispered, all her fears forgotten as she thought of the pleasant party she was going to take to the Sunshine Islands.
"Is it, little girl?" tenderly.
"Is it! You know I never had anything in all my life until Uncle Pete died, and then in a flash I stopped being nobody and was somebody. I should say I was somebody! Old Mr. Kingley never knew I was on earth until I became a queen, and now he has given me a banquet and unlimited credit, and Mrs. Kingley invited me to dinner, and Ethel Kingley has asked me to join her bridge club, and Mr. Bill—Mr. Bill is here all the time!" She flushed as she spoke of Mr. Bill.
"You like Bill Kingley, don't you, Tessie?" he asked gently.
The color in Tessie's cheeks deepened. "Of course I like him," she said frankly. "I adored him before I ever knew him and now—" She raised her head and looked at Joe. "He's so kind and interested," she explained softly. "He thinks it's awfully jolly for me to be a queen."
"He would!" Joe was rather scornful of Mr. Bill's thought. "He hasn't sense enough to see that thrones are nothing but targets now. It may have been all right in the old days to have kings and queens, Tessie, I'm not questioning thepast, I'm too busy with the present and the future, but it isn't all right now. The people don't need them. You shouldn't be proud and happy to be a queen. You should be angry and indignant!"
"Why, Joe Cary!" There was no doubt that she was indignant and angry, but it was not because she was a queen. "How can you talk like that? The idea! The very idea! I asked you to help me and if you only insult me—" She turned away so that he would not see the tears which filled her eyes.
"Oh, Tessie! Silly little girl!" His arm was around her. "I wouldn't hurt you for the world, but I have to tell you the truth. I can't lie to you the way other people do! I can't do it! I think so much of you, little Tessie! I hate to have you even play you are a queen!"
She pulled herself free and stared at him. "Play!" she cried furiously. "Play! I am a queen, Joe Cary, and you know it! Just because I've known you for years and years is no reason why you—you—" She was so angry that she could not say another word. She could not look at him either for the tears overflowed her eyes. "I wish you'd go!" she managed to stammer.
Joe never thought of going. He had a shamed sort of feeling as if he had broken a little girl's doll, and he took Tessie in his arms again and kissed the tears from her soft cheeks.
"Tessie!" he murmured. "Little Tessie!"
She could feel the hard beat of his heart under her head. She had never supposed a man's heart would beat like that. Her own heart often thumped more madly, but a man's heart was different. She pushed him away. Joe Cary need not think that he could say the things he had said to her and then kiss her and expect her to forget his hard words. How dared he kiss her when he talked as he did! She was a queen! She was! And men didn't kiss queens! Men had been killed for less than Joe had done.
"Joe Cary," she began angrily, but he would not let her say another word. He closed her lips with the palm of his hand.
"Give it up, Tessie," he said breathlessly, swept from his feet by the soft sweetness of her lips. "Give up this ridiculous fairy tale and——"
"Why, Joe Cary!" She pushed him away, all wide-eyed astonishment. "Stop being a queen! The idea! I want you to know that I like being a queen! And I'm not afraid now! Not a bit! I don't care that for the Sons of Sunshine!" And she snapped her fingers at the rebels.
Joe looked at her and thought how dear and sweet and childish she was. If she were ten years old she could be no more unreasonable.
"I hope you'll always feel that way," was all he said, for he understood perfectly that nothing he could say would influence her now. He would have to leave it to Fate to show her what it meantto be the queen of half a dozen islands filled with savages.
It was not altogether Tessie's fault that she was so unreasonable and turned such a deaf ear to his plain, practical words. When Mr. Bill came in a few moments later, he did not scold Tessie and tell her that she was a little fool to think that she was a queen. Mr. Bill took her hand and raised it to his lips.
"Queen Teresa!" he murmured adoringly.
Tessie shot a triumphant glance at Joe before she went to put on her wrap, for she and Mr. Bill were going out to dine.
"At the Kingleys," she told Joe with shining eyes, for a month ago Tessie never thought that Fate could ever arrange matters so that she would dine at the Kingleys as an honored guest. But the Tessie of a month ago was not the Tessie of to-day, not a bit. No wonder the Kingleys, even Mrs. Kingley, now looked at her admiringly and made much of her.
When she came back with her rose wrap floating from her shoulders, her face rosy, too, and her eyes as bright as stars, even Joe had to look at her in admiration. But he groaned as well as admired. What was going to happen to little Tessie! Granny shook her head at another new frock, although that famous blind man on his galloping horse could have seen that she was peacock-proud of her granddaughter.
"Don't forget Ka-kee-ta," she said to Tessie, as if Ka-kee-ta were a pocket handkerchief and must not be forgotten.
"Oh, Ka-kee-ta!" Tessie stamped her satin slipper. "I wish I could lose Ka-kee-ta! I hate to have him always at my heels!"
"It's part of the price of being a queen," Joe said gently.
Tessie looked at him and frowned sulkily. "I'm not going to pay anything to-night!" she said sharply. "I shan't take Ka-kee-ta! Come," she held out her hand to Mr. Bill. "We'll go out the other way, and he'll never know but I'm in here. I just can't be bothered with him to-night. It's so stupid to have a bodyguard when I have you." She smiled at Mr. Bill.
"You bet it is!" stammered Mr. Bill, holding her fingers tight in his big paw.
Granny watched them slip away, and then she turned to Joe.
"She's just a foolish little girl," she said, as if she were thinking aloud.
"She'll make a grand woman," prophesied Joe, and he sighed, also.
"That may be." But Granny did not seem quite as sure as Joe that Tessie would make a grand woman. "What's going to change her, Joe?" she asked curiously. "What's going to change a silly little girl into a grand woman?"
"Love," Joe told her boldly and valiantly.
"Love!" Granny repeated the word. "That may be, Joe. Love does strange things. Maybe it can change Tessie. Understand, I don't blame Tessie, Joe. The poor little thing never had anything in all her life until now. No wonder her head is turned. But maybe love can turn it right again."
"It can!" insisted Joe. "Love is the strongest force in the world, you know, Granny. It is nothing for love to straighten a pretty girl's head. It's this queen business that bothers me, Granny. This fool queen business! What do you think about it, anyway?"
Granny snorted contemptuously. "I'm beginning to think that my son Pete died as big a rascal as he lived." Granny did not mince words when she told Joe what she thought. "And that's saying a good deal. I don't like these Sunshine Islands, Joe, and if I have my way, we won't stir a step toward them. I'm afraid of the savages, but I'm not telling Tessie that. Every girl dreams some day she'll be a queen and now that my girl really is a queen, I'm not the one who'll tell her she was better off when she was selling aluminum in the Evergreen."
Joe squared his shoulders as if he put a burden on them.
"Well, I will," he said stoutly. "I don't believe in deceiving people even for their own good."
Granny looked at him admiringly, but therewas something more than admiration in her faded eyes. Was it pity? "You always were a brave boy, Joe Cary," she said. "And you're young enough to believe in yourself. But girls are different from anything you've met yet. You've got to handle them different. But what's the use of an old woman like me talking to you? You'll have to find out things for yourself."
"Yes," agreed Joe proudly. "I'm the kind that has to find things out for himself."
"Stay and have dinner with me?" asked Granny with cordial hospitality. "Now that Tessie's gone to Kingley's and Johnny's at that Boy Scout camp I'll be all alone if you don't stay."
"Where's Norah Lee?" Joe questioned carelessly, but he flushed a bit.
"We can ask Norah, too," Granny told him quickly. "She don't often stay for dinner. She's a great help to Tessie, Joe, but Tessie pays her good wages so I suppose Tessie is a help to her, too."
"That's the way it works out. When a fellow helps you you help him, too. And Norah would be a peach if she wasn't all for business."
"That's just—what was the word we heard so much about during the war? Camouflage? That's just camouflage, Joe. No girl is all for business on the inside even if she is on the outside. You take my word for it that inside a girl is all for romance. That's the way the good Lord madegirls." And she nodded her pepper-and-salt head knowingly.
"I wonder!" Joe said eagerly, and he looked at Granny as if he would like to believe her.
"I know!" declared Granny. "And now I'll go and ask Norah Lee if she wants to eat with us, and then we can talk about these islands of Tessie's some more. I didn't know until to-day that a man could have more than one wife in the Sunshine Islands. The old king, Pete's friend, had three. It makes me wonder about Pete. But there's one thing sure, Joe Cary, Tessie shan't have but one husband. I don't care anything about their old customs!"