The Amazing Inheritance Part 12

"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.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said. "Can't keep away from the old home, can you? May I say we miss you like the d.i.c.kens 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 a.n.a.lytical 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 bas.e.m.e.nt to sketch the queen, not to talk to the queen's secretary.

Mr. Kingley was proud of his business ac.u.men as he looked around the crowded bas.e.m.e.nt. It was not every man who would have secured so much publicity in the discovery of a queen in a store bas.e.m.e.nt. 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 bas.e.m.e.nt. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d," rumbled Ka-kee-ta, as if the Tear of G.o.d was all that counted and queens were less than nothing. "The Tear of G.o.d!"

Tessie's hand went involuntarily to her neck. The Tear of G.o.d 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