"I should further suggest," went on Mr. Kingley, who seemed full of helpful suggestions, "that, as the queen is to marry my son, the visit to the islands might be a feature of their wedding trip."

"Gosh!" muttered Joe Cary, visualizing the headlines which such a wedding trip would produce in every newspaper.

"Oh!" exclaimed Tessie, but it was a very different "Oh" from the one she had uttered before. What a wonderful man old Mr. Kingley was! With Mr. Bill beside her, she would not be afraid if all six islands were covered with cannibals. She looked at Mr. Bill, her face all pink dimples.

"Now that," exclaimed Mr. Bill enthusiastically, "is a real idea!" He caught Tessie's hand and squeezed it.

But Mr. Pitts shook his head. "You would never be allowed to land," he prophesied.

"Well," exclaimed Tessie stubbornly, "I'm not going to give up my islands until I've seen them!" Mr. Kingley's suggestion was proving more alluring to her every minute.

Mr. Pitts sighed and settled himself for a long argument. He took great pains to hold the picture of Ti-ta so that Tessie would have to look at the tattooed face.

Tessie turned away from it. "And if I'm married to Mr. Bill," her voice shook with ecstasy at the thought, "I couldn't marry that man!"

"The islands would never recognize your marriage to any man but Ti-ta,"

Mr. Pitts insisted. "You would have to marry him or resign your claims.

I am sorry that you don't like my suggestion. It was made to help you. I know what the islands are. I know how Pete Gilfooly managed to hold them. They are no place for a white woman!" And he told them more about the islands, and the barbarous customs of the natives, whom Pete Gilfooly had never been able to civilize, even if he had built them a church and a moving-picture theater. He made Tessie's warm blood run cold, and even Mr. Kingley shook his head.

"Why they're nothing but savages!" Mr. Kingley exclaimed in disgust.

"That's what I have been telling you," Mr. Pitts said patiently. "They have no respect or consideration for women. Miss Gilfooly, even if she is the queen, would be only Ti-ta's slave. She would be just one of his wives!"

"I wouldn't!" cried Tessie, fiercely indignant at such a statement. "I wouldn't marry anybody ever but Mr. Bill! And if those Sunshine Island people don't want me to be their queen, why I don't owe them anything!"

She had suddenly made an amazing discovery. "I haven't any obligation to them at all!" Of course she hadn't! Mr. Kingley could talk about the responsibilities Providence had given her if he wanted to, but even Mr.

Kingley should see that she owed nothing to a people who refused to let her take the responsibilities. "I'm glad I had the islands, that I was their queen," she went on eagerly, "for they brought me and Mr. Bill together, but now that we are together, I don't want them! Not for a minute! I think they're horrid! I wouldn't live where men can have half-a-dozen wives!"

"But--" began Mr. Kingley feebly.

He had never had anything to do with a royal abdication before, but he felt that this was not the way one should properly be managed. Surely there must be a system for such an affair.

Tessie stamped her foot. "Please, please don't make any more objections!" she begged. "If you were a girl, and had to choose between splendid Mr. Bill and that tattooed horror, you wouldn't hesitate a second, no matter how many kingdoms were thrown in with the native. I'd rather marry Mr. Bill than have a dozen kingdoms! I would!" she repeated defiantly. "I'm like Joe Cary," she even dared to say to purpling Mr.

Kingley. "I've learned that women are of far more use to the world than queens."

"Good for you, Tess!" applauded Joe Cary.

"But--" Mr. Kingley began again ever more feebly.

"And anyway," went on Tessie, the words coming in an impetuous rush, "this is my kingdom, and if I want to give it back to the people I can!

Can't I?" She appealed to Mr. Bill. "You would just as soon I wouldn't be a queen, wouldn't you?"

"I'd rather!" he told her honestly. "I'd a lot rather have you just little Tessie Gilfooly. I've told you more than once that I wished you weren't a queen."

Tessie drew a long breath and smiled radiantly at Mr. Bill. It pleased her enormously to hear that he liked her better as Tessie Gilfooly. But when she looked at Mr. Kingley she sighed. "I wish you did, too," she said wistfully. She could not be quite happy without Mr. Kingley's approval. "I wish you didn't want me to keep on being a queen."

Before Mr. Kingley could tell her how much better it was in his estimation for her to remain a queen, the door opened, and Mr. Phelps came in with a newspaper which he placed before Mr. Marvin.

"The noon edition of the _Gazette_," he explained importantly, and he looked curiously at Tessie. "I thought you should see this at once." And he pointed to an item in the upper left-hand corner of the folded sheet.

Mr. Marvin looked at the big headline. "Upon my word!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "A tidal wave has washed over the Sunshine Islands and destroyed two of them. Here is a dispatch from Honolulu that on the twenty-third of the month, a tidal wave swept over the Sunshine Islands and destroyed two of them!"

"Well, I'll be darned!" exclaimed Mr. Bill, the first to find his voice, and he put his arm around Tessie and held her tight, as if to make sure that she would not be swept away from him.

"A tidal wave!" cried Tessie, and she looked almost suspiciously at Mr.

Pitts, as if she suspected that he had had something to do with the tidal wave. "Do they have those on the islands, too?" There seemed to be no end to the disagreeable things that could happen on the Sunshine Islands.

"Occasionally," mumbled Mr. Pitts, as he s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from Mr.

Marvin and read the dispatch himself. "There used to be twelve islands in the group, but six of them have been destroyed by tidal waves. The last was in 1853 when the smallest, Ki-yu-hi, was swept away. I must cable Honolulu!" And he hurried from the room, Ka-kee-ta at his heels.

Tessie turned to Mr. Kingley. "Just suppose we had gone there on our wedding trip, Mr. Bill and I, and we had been swept away by a tidal wave!" she said, her face white at the mere thought. "How would you feel then? I shouldn't think you would want us to have anything to do with such a place."

"Well, well," muttered Mr. Kingley, somewhat dazed by the calamity in the Pacific Ocean. "I'm glad your uncle's money was banked in Honolulu.

I guess this Pitts is right and those islands aren't any place for a white woman," he admitted slowly.

"Then, that's settled!" Tessie reached forward and patted his hand. "I'm glad you agree with us at last. But isn't it awful to have two whole islands destroyed like that? It wasn't my fault, was it? n.o.body can blame me, can they? Even if I did have the Tear of G.o.d?" She s.n.a.t.c.hed the royal jewel from her bag where she had tucked it when she came to the office, and threw it on the desk, as if it burned her fingers. "Do you suppose the islands were destroyed because Ka-kee-ta brought that to me? Do you suppose the people were right when they said misfortune would come to them if the Tear of G.o.d wasn't brought back?" Her face was quite white and her eyes full of awed fear. "I--I never want to see it again!"

she gasped. "I think those islands are awful! If you aren't killed by savages, you're drowned by tidal waves!" She turned away from the royal pearl with horror.

"I'll take care of it for you," suggested Mr. Kingley, taking it in his hand. "I'll keep it in the store vault." He felt that something should be saved for Tessie from the wreck of her kingdom.

But Tessie shook her head. "I'll give it to Ka-kee-ta," she insisted, "and he can take it back to the islands, and maybe the rest of them will be saved; maybe then there won't be any more tidal waves."

"Sure, you can give it to Ka-kee-ta," Mr. Bill promised her. "I'll be glad to have him take it away from Waloo. I don't want him around, either. He'll be better off with Mr. Pitts. Mr. Pitts seems to understand natives. And some day I'll give you a string of real pearls."

"That's what I'd like!" Tessie was tearfully grateful. "Oh, what will Granny say?" she exclaimed suddenly. "I must go and tell her about the tidal wave and everything!"

XXVI

"Are you surprised?" Norah asked Joe as they went down in the elevator.

She looked at Joe curiously, for there was a broad grin on Joe's face, and a grin was not what Norah expected him to wear under the circ.u.mstances. She would have said that a sad and sorry countenance was more befitting the occasion. But Joe looked anything but sad and sorry.

Indeed, he was so jubilant that Norah borrowed some of his triumphant satisfaction and smiled, too.

He hesitated. "No," he said slowly, "I'm not surprised, although I don't know whether you refer to Tessie's engagement to Mr. Bill, or to Mr.

Kingley's successful publicity campaign or to the loss of two of the Sunshine Islands?"

"I meant Tessie's engagement!" She was surprised that he did not understand which was the most important of the three events he mentioned. "I thought you were rather fond of our little queen, yourself," she said with the frank interest which was Norah Lee. There was an odd little breathlessness in her voice as she asked the question, and she watched his face with eager eyes.

Joe laughed carelessly. "Our little queen!" He ironically repeated the phrase which had been so often on the lips of Mr. Kingley. "Of course I'm fond of her. She has been like a sister to me. And she used to make me furious, when she was so unhappy, because she couldn't have everything that Ethel Kingley had, and yet she never would do anything to boost herself. She wouldn't do anything but grumble to poor old Granny. I used to talk to her like a Dutch uncle, and a fat lot of good it did until this jolt came. Now she has had a chance to see that it isn't enough to be rich and powerful--to have things. Tessie knows now that it takes more than power and riches to make a girl happy."

"That's right," agreed Norah quickly, and now she looked as jubilant as Joe had looked. "A girl does have to have more than things. She has to have love. I never used to believe that, but I know now it's true. Isn't it romantic?" she hurried on, as Joe started to ask her how she knew about love now. "Mr. Bill and the queen who was once a shopgirl! And all the time she was a shopgirl, Mr. Bill never saw her. Not until she was a queen!" It almost seemed as if she blamed Mr. Bill for such poor eyesight in regard to shopgirls.

"More credit to him!" declared Joe warmly. "I've always thought it was fine in Bill that he never saw the girls who work in the store. If he had run around after Tessie, I would have known he was a bad egg, but now-- You see, living at her house as I did, I felt as if she were a sister. I don't mind telling you that there was a time when I might have cared for her more than a fellow does care for a sister, but when this queen business came up I found I didn't. It showed me the girl I really did care for. Want to hear about her?" He asked in a most friendly fashion, and with a pleased chuckle which made her look at him quickly.

There was a flush on his face and a light in his eyes she had never seen there before. They made her almost afraid to hear about this girl Joe really cared for, but she nodded bravely.

"Of course!" And there was just as much friendliness in her voice as there had been in Joe's--no more and no less. But the color slipped from her cheeks and left them rather white, and there was a puzzled expression in her eyes. "Of course, I've discovered I'm old-fashioned enough to adore romance."