The Amazing Inheritance Part 20

"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 n.o.body 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 are such 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 n.o.body 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 the past, 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 meant to 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 peac.o.c.k-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 there was 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.