"That's the way it works out. When a fellow helps you you help him, too. And Norah would be a peach if she wasn't all for business."
"That's just—what was the word we heard so much about during the war? Camouflage? That's just camouflage, Joe. No girl is all for business on the inside even if she is on the outside. You take my word for it that inside a girl is all for romance. That's the way the good Lord made girls." And she nodded her pepper-and-salt head knowingly.
"I wonder!" Joe said eagerly, and he looked at Granny as if he would like to believe her.
"I know!" declared Granny. "And now I'll go and ask Norah Lee if she wants to eat with us, and then we can talk about these islands of Tessie's some more. I didn't know until to-day that a man could have more than one wife in the Sunshine Islands. The old king, Pete's friend, had three. It makes me wonder about Pete. But there's one thing sure, Joe Cary, Tessie shan't have but one husband. I don't care anything about their old customs!"
[XVI]
It had never occurred to Ka-kee-ta's frizzled head that Tessie could leave the royal suite without his knowledge, not while he stood beside the door. He did not understand that the suite was a corner one with exits on two corridors, and no one had thought it necessary to tell him. So when he saw Tessie come in with Mr. Bill, when he thought that she was with Granny in the room, he gave a howl of surprise and stared at her as if she were a ghost instead of a flesh-and-blood girl in a white dinner frock and a rose wrap. Tessie frowned.
"Do be quiet, Ka-kee-ta!" she ordered impatiently. "He always makes me think of a dog," she said to Mr. Bill. "At night, you know, he just curls up here beside the door and goes to sleep. He is always here! It's so tiresome. I do think that queens have to put up with an awful lot of disagreeable things!" And she sighed.
"They get an awful lot, too," reminded Mr. Bill with a grin. "And as our wise young friend, Joseph Cary, so truthfully remarks, you have to pay for everything you get. Having Ka-kee-ta as a doormat isn't much of a price to pay for all the romance and the luxury and the——"