Part 4

"I can't make head nor tail of what he says!" Officer Clancy exclaimed helplessly. "I'll try him again. Now then, my man, what were you doing here?"

"On my nice clean porch!" added Granny shrilly.

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 passing 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 passed 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 God! 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 assertion 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 basement. 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 hit 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.

"We have a corking day!" he exclaimed, with an approving glance at the cloudless sky. "And we'll have a corking ride. I'm glad your people were married sixty miles from Waloo. This is just a formality, you know, Miss Gilfooly. We all know that you really are the Queen of the Sunshine Islands. We don't need any certificates." And he laughed joyously. It was so strange and unbelievable and delightful that he was to drive a young queen to Mifflin and back.

"It's so wonderful that I can't believe it," Tessie told him earnestly, and her voice quivered with the wonder of it. She looked speculatively at the tonneau of the big car. There was no one in it. "Could we take my grandmother, Mr. Douglas?" She raised her big blue eyes appealingly. "She would enjoy the ride. And my brother Johnny? He's a Boy Scout."

"Sure, we can take all the royal family," chuckled Bert. "There's plenty of room, and we'll feel safer to have a Scout with us." He laughed again as he hospitably opened the tonneau door.

Mrs. Scanlon stood at her window and watched Granny and Johnny settle themselves proudly in the car. She saw Tessie take the seat next to the wheel, and she was green with envy from her red hair to her patched black shoes. She had heard the news, and in her heart she wished that she had had a son to run away to sea and be a king. "My Lil would make a better-looking queen than that washed-out Tessie Gilfooly," she thought, as she watched them from behind the skimpy curtain. "Lil's suit was new this spring, and that blue dud Tessie has on is a year old if it's a day. I don't believe it's really true! Such things don't happen! Queen, indeed!" And she sniffed loudly and elevated her long thin nose because little Tessie Gilfooly had come home with some ridiculous story about being a queen.

Jonah, Johnny's dog--a mongrel with a most rakish brown spot on his white face--jumped wistfully around the car. Jonah wanted to drive to Mifflin too. He saw no reason why he should be left at home alone.

"Could we take him?" asked Granny, eager for the family to enjoy the ride as a family. "He'd enjoy it."

And Jonah joined the two in the tonneau.

"Just as well he's going," muttered Mrs. Scanlon. "I wouldn't have no time to feed anybody's dog to-day!" And to show how little she cared about the good fortune which had come to her neighbors, she took her chairs and tables out of the parlor and gave the room a thorough cleaning.

Bert was right. It was a wonderful day--a blue and gold day. There was not a cloud in the sky, nor a care in the car. The road to Mifflin was velvet smooth, so that the drive, as Bert had prophesied, was delightful. It was no time at all before they were in front of the red brick building which was Mifflin's new Court House. But when they went in and demanded a copy of the record of the marriage of John Gilfooly and Teresa Andrews, which had been solemnized in Mifflin twenty years ago, the clerk could not find the record.

"That's funny!" he exclaimed. "It was here yesterday, but it isn't here to-day!" He looked puzzled.

"Did you see it yesterday?" demanded Bert, with all the importance of a six-months lawyer.

"Sure I saw it yesterday. A man came in and asked for a copy. Funny thing! In all the time I've been here, no one has ever asked about that license. And now yesterday a man wanted it and to-day you want it." The coincidence impressed him as so strange that he blinked.

"Was he a black man and did he have a tattooed nose?" asked Tessie eagerly.

The clerk shook his head. "No, he had light hair and a big nose with freckles all over it. He was what you would call a blond. With a big nose," he insisted almost as if he thought it was quite unusual for a blond to have a nose at all.

Tessie looked at Bert, and at Granny and Johnny. But not one of them could tell her anything about a blond with a big nose. Granny could only shake her head.

"He must have sneaked the record when I went out to look at the fire," the clerk said indignantly. "Ferguson's store had a little blaze yesterday, and when I heard the fire engine I naturally went to the door. But I can't have this sort of thing," he added querulously. "I can't have my records stolen!"

"No, I shouldn't think you could," agreed Bert. "And you had better find out who stole this record."

"I shall!" The clerk was quite offended because Bert had thought it necessary to tell him what to do. "I'll call the sheriff right away." And he bustled over to the telephone.

"But--but why should any one steal my father's and mother's marriage license?" Tessie could not imagine why any one would steal a piece of paper. Money or a jewel--the Tear of God even--could be used, but a piece of paper----

Bert smiled at her puzzled face. "Some one might want to make it impossible for you to prove that you are John Gilfooly's eldest child," he explained carefully.

Tessie gasped. "The idea! But whoever would?" She could not imagine.

Granny bristled indignantly. "Well, they can't do that!" she declared. "Not while I have breath in my body to say she is! I guess I know!"

"Sure you do!" And Bert grinned at her.

But Granny wanted more than smiles. She wanted action--immediate action.

"What are we going to do now?" she demanded. "Can't Tessie be a queen unless she has her ma's and pa's wedding license?"

"I don't see why you need any old paper," put in Johnny. "If you want to know about the wedding of father and mother, all you have to do is to ask Granny. She was at the wedding, weren't you, Granny?"

Granny turned to gaze at him with pride. "Bless the boy!" she exclaimed in honest admiration. "Of course I was there! And I can tell the lawyers all about it! That was a bright thought, Johnny, but I'm glad it didn't come to you before. If you'd had it in Waloo we'd have missed a pleasant ride. I can tell you all about the wedding," she said to Bert, and there was much triumph in her voice, "all about the bride's dress and the refreshments and everything!"

"I don't believe that your evidence will be enough, Mrs. Gilfooly," Bert said reluctantly and regretfully, for he would have preferred to tell Granny that her story of the Gilfooly-Andrews wedding would be sufficient to place Tessie on any throne. "You are too near a relative to be disinterested. That's what the court would say," he explained hastily as Granny snorted.

"My soul and body!" She stared at him. "As if I'd lie about my own son or my own granddaughter! But there were other folks at the wedding," she, remembered joyously. "The Hortons, who live over on Olive street, were there. Sophie Horton was Tessie's mother's bridesmaid, and Sam Horton knocked over a piano lamp the night of the wedding and came near burning up the bride. He'll remember and be glad to tell you that my son John married Teresa Andrews right and proper. And that ain't all," went on Granny, who could accomplish great things when she began little things, "the man who married John and Teresa and baptized Tessie is alive to this day and living in this very town. We've only got to go to the Reverend Townshend's house to hear all about it. I suppose the law would believe a regular minister if it wouldn't believe a loving grandmother," she said to Bert, with a decided tinge of resentment in her hearty voice.

Bert laughed apologetically. "That's fine! But you understand, Mrs. Gilfooly, it is because you are so close to Miss Gilfooly that your evidence wouldn't be sufficient. The court might suspect such a near relative, but the word of the minister who married Miss Gilfooly's parents should be enough for any court."

"I should think so!" snorted Granny, who had nothing but contempt for a court which would not believe a grandmother.

They drove through the pretty streets of Mifflin to the home of Mr. Townshend, which was almost hidden by shrubbery and vines, and the Boy Scout rang the bell loudly. But Mr. Townshend was in Waloo visiting his sister, and the young granddaughter, who answered the bell, had never heard of the Gilfoolys.

"Never mind!" exclaimed Granny cheerfully, for Tessie looked as if she did mind. "We know where to go now for what we want, and that's everything, no matter what you're looking for. You say Reverend Townshend's sister lives on Tenth Avenue South?" she asked the young granddaughter. "Mr. Douglas will just drive us there and hear with his own ears what Reverend Townshend has to say."

"Sure I'll drive you!" Bert said. "That's my job!" And he looked as if he liked his job enormously.

But black luck preceded them, for when they returned to Waloo and drove to Tenth Avenue South, they learned that the Reverend Townshend had been knocked down by an automobile as he was crossing a street that afternoon, and was lying in the hospital with concussion of the brain. And they found, on driving to Olive street, that the Hortons had gone to Vermont for the summer.

"I don't believe I ever was born!" Tessie was almost in tears. Her lips quivered. So did her voice.

"Tut, tut!" rebuked her grandmother. "There were fifty-six folks, as I remember, at that wedding, and it will be funny if I can't find some of them. You don't want to get discouraged at the beginning of anything, Tessie, not if you ever want to see the end of it."

"Why don't you drop it, Tess?" advised Joe Cary, when he heard about the blond man with a big nose, the stolen marriage record, and about the Reverend Townshend who was in the hospital with concussion of the brain. "The Fates seem to be against you! So are some people, I should judge. There is evidently some one who doesn't want you to be the Queen of the Sunshine Islands. Look at last night! Look at to-day! Why do you want to be a queen, anyway?" He asked the question as he would have asked why she wanted to be a salesgirl, or why she did not want to be a stenographer.

Tessie stared at him. The idea of asking such a question! Joe Cary was crazy! And she told him so. "You talk as if being a queen was like selling aluminum in the Evergreen!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"It isn't as decent!" cried Joe, and then Tessie knew, beyond a doubt, that he was crazy.

"You can't stop being a queen if you are one!" she flared.

"Why can't you?" demanded Joe. "Can't you abdicate? Seems to me I've read of several kings and queens who were glad to abdicate. You don't have to be a queen unless you please, Tessie Gilfooly!" He actually did seem to think that being a queen was like selling aluminum.

"Joe--Joe Cary--" she began in exasperation, and then she startled him by bursting into tears--"you--you never want me to have any f-fun!" she hiccuped.

"Oh, great Scott, Tess!" he said helplessly, and he would have taken her in his arms and kissed the tears away, she was so little and sweet and unreasonable, but Granny snatched her from him.

"There, there, my lamb!" she crooned. "You're all tired out. You just come to your old Granny. There's some folks," she said over her shoulder to Joe, "who are quick enough to tell other folks what to do, but I wonder what they would say if they were to find themselves kings."

Joe stared at her, and then he laughed. "I know what I would do," he declared promptly. "I never would be a king! Not for a minute!" He seemed proud of himself--of what he would be.

"Then you'd be a coward, Joe Cary, and a shirk!" Granny pricked the balloon of his pride with her frankness. "When the good Lord puts responsibilities and duties on a body's shoulders, he can't throw 'em off without being a coward and a shirk. What he has to do is to carry them the best he knows how. Now I want you to stop picking on Tessie just because she's a queen. It isn't her fault, and you needn't talk to her as if it was. We don't none of us know why she was picked out to look after those queer folks in the Pacific Ocean, but I guess the good Lord knows His business, and He knows the Gilfoolys. It isn't any crime to be a queen. It's a privilege, and we're all going to enjoy it with Tessie. I don't want to hear any more picking," she repeated sternly.

"All right, Granny," Joe murmured meekly, but his eyes twinkled. "Just as you say. Tess can think she is Queen of England, and I shan't say another word!"

VII

"And about this wedding license, I'll put on my thinking cap," remarked Granny. She went into the bedroom and closed the door.

When Tessie was a little thing and heard Granny talk of her thinking cap, she always visualized the cap as something between the formal Sunday black straw or velvet, and the Monday morning gingham sunbonnet Granny wore when she hung out the washing. And now that Tessie was a big girl, she knew no more of what a thinking cap was like than she had when she was seven, for Granny had never worn one in public. She always closed the door before she put it on.