"I suppose this is what you'll have all the time in the Sunshine Islands," she said with pride. "Just think of your Uncle Pete, Tessie, sitting down to dinner every day in a room like this and to a dinner like this. I don't wonder he never came home. The good Lord has sure been kind to the Gilfoolys!"
Tessie did not eat much, and she did not talk much. She was still too dazed at what had happened. She could not believe that it was true. It couldn't be true that she was in the dining room of the Waloo Hotel, with Mr. Bill as the host of a family party—a family party of Gilfoolys! Such things never happened to poor working girls. But Mr. Bill's radiant smile and eager attention convinced her that at least he was real.
Gilbert Douglas was with a party of young people at the other end of the room. He came over to speak to Tessie, and tell her that he would call for her the next morning about ten. Mr. Bill yearned to stab him with his dinner knife. When Bert went back to his friends and told them who Tessie was, there were many curious and admiring, and almost as many envious, glances sent toward her. Altogether it was a very pleasant dinner. But Tessie would not loiter over the coffee—not even to listen to the orchestra nor to dance once with Mr. Bill.
"I'd faint," she declared. "I feel all wobbly sitting down. And I want to stop at the library. It closes at nine. And anyway it wouldn't be right to Uncle Pete. We had to have something to eat, but we don't have to dance."
Every one in the big dining room seemed to know who Tessie was when she left, and there was much craning of necks and whispering. The head waiter bowed them out with much ceremony and hoped that Tessie would come again. Tessie was pink to her little ears, and she shyly murmured that she would like to come again.
They reached the library barely in time. The librarian was just locking the door of the branch station when Mr. Bill and Tessie ran up to her. She obligingly unlocked the door and went back with them.
"The Sunshine Islands," she repeated, when she heard Tessie breathlessly explain what she wanted. "I never heard of them."
"They're in the Pacific Ocean." Tessie told her with much importance.
"We have several books that speak of the islands in the Pacific Ocean," the librarian remembered. "But why on earth do you come running in here at this time of night to ask for books on the Sunshine Islands?" And she looked from pink-cheeked Tessie to grinning Mr. Bill, as if she would not produce one of her books until that question was answered.
"Because," dimpled Tessie, who saw no reason why she should not tell—it was nothing to be ashamed of, and she felt that she had to give some reason for taking the librarian back to her library after the door had been locked for the night—"because I've just heard that I'm the Queen of the Sunshine Islands!"