"Your clothes belong to you, Tess. Don't you make a show of them," he advised in a whisper.
Mr. Kingley went on talking, and he sounded as though he had heard Joe's whisper, although he never looked at Joe.
"A queen owes that sort of thing to her people. They want show and celebration and pageants in return for their money. You must expect that now you are a queen," he told Tessie.
"Huh," sniffed Joe, and he spoke louder than perhaps he meant to speak, for Mr. Kingley looked at him.
"What did you say, Cary?" he asked sharply.
"Here are those proofs from the Gazette for the wash-goods sale," he said. "And as for queens and kings, the fewer there are, the better the world will be."
"This is no place for anarchism, Cary," Mr. Kingley told him coldly. "Go and tell Mr. Maltby I want to see him at once. And, Cary, you might make a little sketch of Miss Gilfooly as she is now and Maltby can run it with a line—'Royalty Clothed by the Evergreen'—under it. It will please the people, my dear. They'll like to come and buy where queens buy," he said shrewdly.
"Huh!" muttered Joe. "Don't you let them make a monkey of you for the old Evergreen, Tess," he whispered, as he went for his pencil and drawing board, after he had mastered his impulse to "punch old Kingley in the snout."
But Tessie never heard him. Joe and his mutters were an old story, but a new and very fascinating tale was the admiration of Mr. Bill and his father. She gladly agreed to everything that Mr. Kingley suggested.
"Of course," went on Mr. Kingley, with the zeal of an artist who wanted his work to be quite perfect, "of course you don't know anything about royal etiquette."