The Amazing Inheritance Part 16

"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 G.o.d 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 b.u.mped 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!" She looked 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. I can'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 the other 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 G.o.d, 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 truth and 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 G.o.d, 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. "But don'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.