"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!"