Tessie smiled at him. "You're wonderful!" she said slowly, as if the words were sweet to her quivering lips.
They were sweet to Mr. Bill's ears, also, and he blushed awkwardly. "Not half as wonderful as you are," he stammered. "You—you're adorable, you know!" And he gazed deep into her big blue eyes.
"Have you given your order?" asked a waitress crisply, for patrons were patrons, and orders were that no one was to be allowed to linger during the rush hour, every one was to be hurried through.
"All right," mumbled Mr. Bill, when he was reminded that he was in the tea-room instead of in Paradise. "What will you have?" he asked Tessie, and the worshiping note in his voice made the waitress turn a bright and vivid green with envy.
"You choose," begged Tessie in a shaking voice. She was afraid of a menu card, and she would far rather listen to Mr. Bill order anything than brave its dangers.
"I'll give you what my sister likes," suggested Mr. Bill after a fruitless effort to find food suitable for royalty. "I suppose all girls like the same things." He gave the order to the waitress, and finished it with a snap which meant, "Now, for heaven's sake, go away and leave us alone."
Every one in the big blue-and-gold room knew that the pretty young girl at the corner table with the son of the owner of the Evergreen, was the Queen of the Sunshine Islands, and many admiring and more envious glances were cast toward her. There was not a girl there who would have refused to give her dearest possessions, all of her possessions, to step into Tessie's shoes, the high-heeled, narrow-toed shoes Tessie wore in defiance of Miss Morley's earnest advice. Think of being a queen and of lunching with young Bill Kingley! Surely the gods crammed the measure full to overflowing for some people. And although the room was decorated entirely in blue and gold it seemed all green, and far more anarchists went out of it that day than had come into it.
Before Tessie and Mr. Bill had reached the nut ice cream with hot chocolate sauce which was the beloved of Mr. Bill's sister, there was a stir and a bustle and Ka-kee-ta shot into the room, breathing hard and glaring defiance at the head waitress, who had vainly tried to persuade him to check his ax at the door. With a snort of satisfaction, he slipped behind Tessie's chair.
"Oh, dear!" Tessie was almost in tears. "Here he is again!"