cannibals are reformed, Mr. Kingley. Uncle Pete didn't allow them to eat anybody!"

"I should hope not! Bless me! This is strange! I never expected anything like this to happen in the Evergreen. I suppose the newspapers will give us the front page for such a story. I wonder what the Bon Ton and the Mammoth will say! The world, as well as Waloo, will be interested." He was forgetting Tessie in his delight in the situation, for, as has been said, he was the owner of the Evergreen before he was any one else. "I don't suppose, Miss Gilfooly," he said slowly, as if he were following a train of thought which was dashing through his mind, "I don't suppose you would want to hold a little sale here some day soon, after the Gazette has published the story? Of aluminum, perhaps? I mean—" as his son gave a shocked exclamation, "Dad!"—"for one of the charities of the Sunshine Islands? It would help both of us. But that can be arranged later. I don't deny it would help the Evergreen as much as it would increase, say—the shoe fund of your new kingdom."

"If it would help you, Mr. Kingley, I'd be glad to do it," Tessie told him obligingly, and she glanced reprovingly at Mr. Bill, who snorted scornfully.

"Help me!" Mr. Kingley laughed and beamed at her with more satisfaction than he could put in words. "Why every woman in town would want to buy a piece of aluminum if a queen would sell it to her," he declared. "But we can talk of that later. We'll keep in touch with you—in close touch. And now, suppose you let Bill take you home or to your lawyer's?"

"I don't want to ask any favors," Tessie managed to stammer, although her heart began to thump unmanageably. Imagine Mr. Bill taking her home!

"It's a pleasure to grant them." Mr. Kingley rose to his feet again and bowed to her. "After you've had your picture taken, Bill will go with you to your lawyer's. Help her all you can, Bill," he told his son. "She was one of us, you know, one of the Evergreen family, and we must help her."

"I will," promised Mr. Bill. "I'll stay right with her. Come on, Your Majesty!" He grinned at Tessie. "It sounds like a joke," he said with the frankness of a member of the family.

Tessie raised her eyes and smiled at him. "It isn't a joke," she said slowly. "If it had been a joke, that native with the funny hair and the tattooed nose would never have given me this, would he?" And she opened her left hand which she had held tightly closed, and showed them a pearl as big as a marble. It was threaded on some sort of grass or vegetable fiber and caught in a network of the same lacelike filament.

"Bless me!" exclaimed Mr. Kingley, who had never seen a pearl as large as a marble before. He touched it with his fingers to make sure that he really saw one now. "Do you suppose it is real?"

"It's real!" nodded Tessie. "And it belongs to the King, or the Queen, of the Sunshine Islands. I couldn't be the queen if I didn't have it," she told him, and her eyes were big with wonder, that she was a queen at all.

Mr. Kingley stopped looking at the pearl to look at Tessie. "Imagine giving it to you without proper authority, papers, identification, you know!" It was most unbusinesslike to his businesslike mind. He could not imagine such a procedure. When he did business he had the papers very carefully drawn up before anything passed from hand to hand. Evidently that was not the way affairs were conducted in the Sunshine Islands. "Simple people, aren't they? It must be worth a great deal of money!" He eyed the pearl with the respect one gives to what is worth a great deal of money. It reminded him of something else. "Have you any idea, my dear—I mean, Miss Gilfooly," when Mr. Kingley felt as kindly toward Tessie as he did, it was hard to keep the more informal term from his lips, "what the value of your new kingdom is?"

"The lawyer said the islands were worth hundreds of thousands," Tessie murmured bashfully.

"Dollars?" gasped Mr. Kingley, his eyes bulging again.

"Pounds," corrected Tessie, unconsciously icing the cake she offered Mr. Kingley for inspection. "That's more than dollars, isn't it? I think that's pretty good," she added with innocent pride.

"Good!" He choked over the word. "Take care of her, Bill! Take good care of her," he urged. "My soul, but this is splendid and romantic! I was always interested in romance. I never could have built up the Evergreen as I have if I hadn't been romantic. To think of finding a queen in our basement! Take good care of her, Bill!"

"I will," Mr. Bill promised again. He was far more impressed by Tessie's big blue eyes and the enchanting color in her cheeks than he was by the number of pounds she had just received. Gee, but she was a queen all right! A peach of a queen! "Come on, Miss Gilfooly, and I'll take you home." He drew a quick breath as he discovered that he wanted to have her to himself. He did not want to share her even with his father, who was beaming so benevolently.

"After the picture is taken," reminded Mr. Kingley, faithful to his motto—"Business first." "After the picture is taken. And if there is anything you want in the store, Miss Gilfooly, anything in the way of frocks or furbelows," what he really had in mind was a coronation robe but he did not put the thought in words, "just help yourself. Your credit is good with us. I'll see you again, Queen Teresa." And he laughed and took her hand and shook it. "Perhaps you would like me to put your jewel in the safe?"

"I want to show it to Granny." Tessie closed her fingers over the pearl. "She'll be interested because Uncle Pete wore it. I'll take good care of it," she promised.

"Do!" he begged, and he bowed to her again as she went away with Mr. Bill. "My soul!" he declared, as he dropped back in his chair and stared around him at the familiar furnishings which just then did not seem so familiar. "This is going to be a big thing for the Evergreen! Where's Miss Lee? We must tell the world what was found in our basement!"

As Tessie and Mr. Bill left the office they met Joe Cary coming to the office. His hands were full of drawings to be submitted to the critical eye of Mr. Kingley, who refused to let so much as a sketch of a hook-and-eye appear in any paper without his august approval. Joe stopped and stared. What was Tessie Gilfooly doing up here on the office floor with Mr. Bill, when her place was in the basement? He sensed trouble of some sort and took his stand promptly and unquestioningly beside Tessie.

"What's up, Tess?" he demanded, without any preliminary remarks.

Tessie tore her admiring eyes from Mr. Bill and looked at Joe as he stood there, his hands full of sketches, an anxious expression on his face which was half hidden by the ugly green shade that protected his eyes. Above the shade his brown hair was rough and untidy. Mr. Bill's hair was black and of lacquer smoothness. Joe's coat was old and torn. There was a darn at the upper corner of the pocket. Mr. Bill was a sartorial dream—a joy to his tailor. The contrast between Joe and Mr. Bill was so marked that it was painful. Tessie blushed for Joe. But he was her old friend, and she wanted to tell him the news herself.

"Oh, Joe!" she cried. "What do you think? I'm a queen!"

Naturally Joe would not believe such an absurd statement until Tessie had told him about the lawyer and the native with the frizzled hair, and showed him the big pearl, and even then he looked as if he did not believe it.

"It's a joke!" He glared at Mr. Bill as if he suspected that Mr. Bill were responsible for the joke, which he considered was in very bad taste.

"You remember Uncle Pete?" Tessie went on