The Amazing Inheritance Part 4

"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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d. 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. "n.o.body 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 ap.r.o.n," 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 G.o.d in your pocket?" she asked in a hoa.r.s.e 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!