But the man only muttered some more of the unintelligible gibberish jumbled around the word "Shark." Officer Clancy jerked him to his feet, and he stood leaning weakly against the policeman.

"I better take him along to the station," the latter suggested. "He hasn't done any harm, has he? Maybe he was taken sick as he was pa.s.sing by, and came in to get help," he suggested eagerly.

"He's got a lump as big as an egg on the back of his head," declared Mr.

Bill. "Looks to me as if somebody had blackjacked him!"

"That so?" Officer Clancy looked at the head whose black thatch was unlike any hair he had ever seen before. "There is a lump there! I expect that was it, Mrs. Gilfooly. Somebody slugged him, and he crawled up on your porch and fainted. And I bet I saw the guy that did it! I pa.s.sed a queer-looking chap not ten minutes ago. He was dark like this fellow, and his hair was frizzed for fair, and he was in his bare feet.

He was walking fast and looking straight ahead of him. I remember I thought he was a fine figure of fun. I never saw anybody just like him."

"Could it have been Ka-kee-ta?" Tessie asked Mr. Bill in a frightened whisper. "He was in his bare feet." She shivered.

"Ka--oh, the chap Mr. Marvin spoke about. I wonder!" And Mr. Bill looked at Tessie.

Clancy's sharp ears heard their whispers. "Friend of yours?" he asked quickly.

"No, not a friend," Mr. Bill answered just as quickly. "Just a messenger of some sort. I think you're right, Officer, you better take this man away."

"I'll take him to the station until his mind clears up and he can tell us how it was. You can drive us over." He nodded to Mr. Bill.

"I would be glad to." But Mr. Bill sounded anything but glad. "Only I hate to leave Mrs. Gilfooly and Miss Gilfooly here alone."

"I guess I'm here!" shouted the insulted Boy Scout. "I guess I know what to do if anything happens!"

"There won't anything happen," promised Clancy. "It's happened. And I'll have the sergeant send a man right over to keep an eye out. I'm sure glad to hear of your luck, Miss Gilfooly." He turned to Tessie and solemnly shook her hand. "You'll make a fine queen!"

"I don't know as I want to be a queen if it means finding strange men fainting on our front porch," Tessie murmured almost tearfully.

"Perhaps I'd better stay," suggested Mr. Bill, as he saw how she trembled. "I can sit downstairs and read your books."

"You need your rest as well as we do if you're going to be any help to your pa to-morrow," objected Granny. "We'll be all right with Johnny and the man Officer Clancy sends up. You take that stranger to the station, Mr. Clancy, and lock him up tight. I'll bet he knows more than he's letting on." She peered into the dark face. "Thank the good Lord tattooed noses ain't fashionable in Waloo," she murmured. "Tessie, you ought to go to bed. There's Joe Cary!" She stopped as she heard a whistle up the street. "Joe! Joe Cary!" she called.

"Here!" answered Joe. "What's up?" he demanded as he came up the walk.

"You can run along," he told Mr. Bill and Officer Clancy, when he heard the story. "I'll look after things here." When Mr. Bill had reluctantly said good night, holding Tessie's fingers until Joe took them from him, and gone away with Clancy and the stranger, Joe turned to Tessie.

"You'd better go to bed, Tess. You must be all tired out!"

"She is!" Granny answered for her. "We're all tired. I declare it does take it out of a body to have such wonderful things happen. Can you believe it, Joe? We had a nice dinner at the Waloo," she said, following him into the house. "And that Mr. Bill is a real pleasant young fellow.

My soul and body!" she exclaimed, staring around in amazement, for the house which she had left as neat as wax was now in disorder. Drawers had been pulled out and their contents dumped on the floor, closets emptied in a way that startled and angered Granny. "Somebody's been here, Joe!

Somebody has been all over this house!" She stared at Joe. "I expect they came to get that jewel of yours, Tessie," she guessed loudly. "That Tear of G.o.d! Thank goodness I didn't put it in the baking-powder can.

Thank goodness you got it in your pocket! Well, this is too much!"

"There, there, Granny!" soothed Joe. "They didn't get anything. You trot up to bed, and Tess and I'll straighten things out."

It took some time before Granny could be persuaded to leave them and more time before the drawers were pushed into place and doors shut on the disordered closets. Joe looked at Tessie. Her face was milk-white and her eyes were heavy and tired.

"Well, Tess!" He put his hands on her shoulders so that she would look into his face. "What do you think about queens now? Are you still glad that you are such an old-fashioned, wornout thing as a queen?" He bent to peer into her eyes.

"I don't know," she faltered. She put up her hands to clasp his strong fingers. "It isn't what I thought it would be, if things like this are going to happen."

"All sorts of things happen to queens," prophesied Joe. "You have only to read the papers to know that. The world doesn't need queens any more.

I'm sorry, Tessie," his hands slipped from her shoulders to her waist and he drew her to him. "I'm sorry you're one!" His voice was soft as velvet and honey-sweet.

But Tessie pushed him away. "Why, Joe Cary!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"If that isn't just like you! You never want me to have any fun! You only want me to go to the Y. W. C. A. gymnasium, and to study shorthand!"

"I don't want you to be a queen!" he insisted stubbornly, his face flushed, his eyes snapping.

"Why not?" she asked defiantly, and when he did not answer her at once, she asked him again, more softly this time. "Why not, Joe Cary?"

"Because," he said, and he folded his arms across his chest and looked at her scornfully, "queens always think they are a darned sight better than other people. I'm one of the other people, but you needn't think you are any better than I am, Tessie Gilfooly, even if you are queen of a lot of cannibals. Queen!" He had nothing but hot scorn for the word.

She turned away from him impatiently. "You never want me to do anything but work," she pouted. "The idea of talking to me like that, as if a queen wasn't any more than a scrubwoman. I shan't listen to you another minute. I'm going to bed. But before I go, I'll tell you one thing, Joe Cary: if I had heard you were a king, I wouldn't have been so nasty. I would have been proud and glad for you!"

"Tessie!" he cried. But she tossed her head and ran up the steep stairs.

She would not look back at him even if he did stand at the foot of the stairs and call to her. He had hurt her when he had said that queens were no better than other people. The very idea! Mr. Bill never talked that way. Indeed, he never did! Tessie stopped thinking about disgruntled Joe Cary so that she could think of the wonderful Mr. Bill.

Oh, wasn't he the most wonderful!

VI

In spite of her tearful a.s.sertion that she knew she would not sleep a wink, Tessie was soon dreaming of her new kingdom and of Mr. Bill. Not once did shabby Joe Cary intrude on her dream of glory. It seemed only a minute from the time she crept shiveringly into bed beside Granny, before Granny was shaking her shoulder.

"After nine o'clock, Tessie!" she was calling. "If you're going to Mifflin to get your ma's and pa's wedding license at ten, you'd better get up right away!"

Tessie opened her eyes slowly and reluctantly. She was afraid of what they would see. Yes, there was Granny calling her as she called her every morning. There was the ugly old bureau and the crayon portrait of her grandfather. Of course, she had been dreaming. She wasn't a queen.

She had never been at the Waloo for dinner with the wonderful Mr. Bill.

She would have to get up and put on her old sateen and go and sell aluminum in the Evergreen bas.e.m.e.nt. She wished she hadn't dreamed that Uncle Pete had died and made her a queen. Such a dream as that made it harder than ever to waken. She had known all the time that it was only a dream. Such wonderful things never happened to poor working girls. And if it really was nine o'clock, she was afraid to imagine how Mr. Walker would rebuke her for her tardiness. Why had Granny let her sleep when Granny knew that she would be fined if she were late?

"And your friend, that Mr. Bill, stopped here half an hour ago on his way to the store," went on Granny, shaking out Tessie's clothes and hanging them on a chair. "We got to get you some new things, Tessie.

These ain't royal. They don't do credit to your poor Uncle Pete, who's been so good to you. Mr. Bill said he stopped at the police station, and the police told him that we were right last night when we said that man on the porch was. .h.i.t on the head. A friend came for him, and after he had talked to him, he told the police just how it was. The colored man was walking along the street, when all of a sudden he didn't know nothing. I don't suppose he could have upset my closets if he was unconscious, and so long as nothing's missing, I ain't going to worry.

But there certainly were queer doings last night. You hurry right along, Tessie. Your coffee's all ready, and I warmed up the liver. No knowing where we'll be for dinner to-night, and we can't be wasteful even if we are queens."

There it was, that most disturbing word! Tessie swung her feet over the side of the bed and stared at her grandmother, who was already dressed in her black alpaca instead of her morning calico, and whose front hair must have been surprised to find itself out of curling pins at nine o'clock in the morning.

"Then it's all true!" she faltered. She told herself again that it couldn't be true. It just could not be true. She thought she would die if it wasn't true, but she knew it wasn't.

"What's true?" questioned Granny, who was putting the room to rights.

"That I'm a queen?" Tessie blushed hotly, as she asked the question. It was so perfectly ridiculous and unbelievable, and yet Granny talked as if it might be true.

Granny stood still with Tessie's worn blue serge suit in one hand and a clothesbrush in the other. "Of course you're a queen!" The firm confident tone sent a shiver of delight down Tessie's spine. "Didn't your Uncle Pete die and make you a queen? Come down just as soon as you're dressed, Tessie. We ain't got time to waste to-day."

Even when Bert Douglas drove up in a shining touring car, Tessie could not believe that she was to ride in it, although Bert told her that she was, and he for one was mighty glad that she was.