LITMIR.BIZ

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      Tessie had never crossed the threshold of Mr. Kingley's sacred office. She had never dreamed of crossing it, and she hung back when Mr. Bill threw open the door.

      "Dad!" cried Mr. Bill, a trifle breathlessly. "Listen to this! You'll never believe it!"

      There was an excitement in his voice which made his father, busy with Miss Norah Lee who was on the Evergreen publicity staff, look up from the sketches and copy they were studying. And when he saw his only son hand-in-hand with a pink-cheeked, big-eyed, bareheaded girl in a black sateen frock, he feared the worst.

      "Bill!" he exclaimed harshly. He rose to his feet and glared at his only son. "How dare you?"

      He changed his tone completely when he heard the story. His eyes fairly bulged as he stared at Queen Teresa who stood modestly beside Mr. Bill. For once in his life Mr. William Allison Kingley seemed at a complete loss for words. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the Evergreen, and so it was not surprising that Mr. Kingley, like Mr. Walker, was unprepared. It takes youth like Tessie's and Mr. Bill's to accept such stupendous events unquestioningly. Youth naturally believes in fairies, and if you really do believe in fairies, why—anything—everything—is possible.

      "What a chance for some gorgeous publicity!" Norah Lee murmured. She had risen, too, and was staring at Tessie as if she had never seen a black-frocked salesgirl before, and as if she saw her now as so many columns of print on the front page of the Gazette.

      An odd smile touched Mr. Kingley's mouth, and at once he was himself again. Like a well-known Queen of England, Mr. Kingley had a word engraved upon his heart—and that word was Evergreen. Mr. Kingley lived and breathed for the Evergreen. Every thought, word and deed was for the Evergreen, first and last. He went to bed at night that he might get up in the morning to work for the Evergreen. He passionately envied his son, because Mr. Bill was just beginning his career in the Evergreen, and so might naturally expect a long life of service to the big store. He admired his wife and daughter because they were clothed and nourished by the Evergreen. Just for a flash, perhaps for the only time in his life, when he saw his son and Tessie together, hand-in-hand, he had forgotten his idol; but Norah Lee's impulsive murmur pulled him down on his knees to it again.

      "Of course. That's just what I was going to say!" He seemed irritated because Norah had already said it. "I heartily congratulate you, Miss Gilfooly—or should I say Queen Teresa?" He smiled benevolently at the queen as he took her hand and solemnly shook it. "You might send for the photographer, Miss Lee, and arrange to have some pictures taken of Miss Gilfooly at the aluminum—was it?—receiving the news of her—of her accession to the throne of the Sunshine Islands. It sounds quite like a romance, doesn't it? And you say you have heard nothing from your Uncle Pete—King Peter, I should say—for twenty-five years?" he asked, as Norah disappeared with a backward look of incredulous wonder at Tessie.

      "No, sir." Tessie spoke softly. She had a pleasant voice, inherited from her Irish ancestors. It sounded exceedingly pleasant and musical to Mr. Kingley, and to Mr. Bill, too. "Not for twenty-five years. He ran away to sea when he was sixteen and my grandfather was awfully cross. He said he would come to no good end, but Granny said a man could make a living on the sea as well as on the land."

      "And your grandmother was right!" Mr. Kingley seemed delighted that Tessie's grandmother had spoken true words. "A king! Bless me! It is romantic!" He sounded almost envious of Tessie's romance. "Do you know anything about these Sunshine Islands?" He seemed to thirst for details. "Bill, push forward that chair for Miss Gilfooly."

      Tessie gave Mr. Bill a shy little smile as she sank into the big chair he pushed forward. Of all the unbelievable things which had happened, this was about the most unbelievable. Imagine sitting in Mr. Kingley's sacred office for a little chat with Mr. Kingley and Mr. Bill! Tessie's head whirled, but she managed to tell them in her soft, pleasant voice that she really knew very little about the Sunshine Islands, but that she would have to resign her position in the Evergreen, because she would have to go to her new kingdom. She spoke a little regretfully of leaving the Evergreen, and Mr. Kingley understood perfectly. He knew he would hate to leave the store even for a throne. Tessie was to see her lawyer at half-past five.

      "After hours," she hastily told Mr. Kingley, so that he would know that she was not going to take advantage of her new honor and ask any favors.

      "Faithful little thing," beamed Mr. Kingley. "You'll make a good queen. And you're going to the islands at once? Not alone, I hope?"

      "My brother John will go with me. He's a Boy Scout!" It would have cheered Johnny's heart to have heard the pride in Tessie's voice.

      "But you will need more support than a Boy Scout. The natives of those Pacific islands are cannibals!" Mr. Kingley was shocked to think that Tessie contemplated going to them without an army to aid her. "At least, I read somewhere once that they were cannibals," he said hurriedly when Mr. Bill looked at him in surprise because he did know something about the Pacific islands. He flushed slightly and seemed annoyed.

      "Johnny's a good Boy Scout," insisted Tessie. "And Granny will go with us, of course. And the 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

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