Ka-kee-ta with his ax and a proud tilt to his frizzled head became a familiar sight in Waloo. He caused more excitement and roused more interest than the queen.
"Bring your bodyguard with you," begged the president of the Home for Aged Women, when Tessie consented to appear at an entertainment the directors had arranged to increase its revenue.
"And do please have your picturesque guard come, too," coaxed the committee from the Junior League, which had invited Tessie to open the ball which the League gave every year to raise funds for its philanthropic work.
So Ka-kee-ta, in his blue clothes, his hair freshly oiled, his tattooed face oiled also, so that he was redolent of rancid cocoanut, his ax in his hand, stood in the back of the royal box, where Granny, in smart black lace and jet beads, and Johnny, in a new scout uniform, and Tessie, wearing a wonderful dancing frock of blue and silver, were the cynosure of all eyes.
When Tessie was asked by a giggling committee if she wished to follow the royal custom and choose her partners, she had blushed and exclaimed fervently, "Gracious! I should say not! I want to be just like the other girls!"
There was a rush when her wish was made known, for every man in the ballroom wanted to be able to tell his friends that he had danced with a queen. Granny beamed at the pushing throng.
"The Gilfoolys always stood well with their friends," she said to no less a person than Mr. Kingley, who had stopped for a word with his former humble employee, and who remained to listen to Granny as she bragged of the Gilfoolys.
Tessie had never imagined there were so many attractive men in the world as she met at the Junior League ball. She was unable to dance a dozen steps with one before another cut in. It was confusing, if flattering, and she gave a little sigh of relief when Bert Douglas swung her through a doorway into a little ante-room.
"Lucky for me I know this place as well as my hat," grinned Bert, when he and Tessie were seated on a red velvet sofa. "Say," he went on even more radiantly, "is this evening real? Am I actually twosing here with a queen?"