"They'll adore you the minute they do see you!" declared Mr. Bill unsteadily.
"Oh, I hope they will!" faltered blushing Tessie.
"Of course they will! Didn't I?" Mr. Bill caught her hand and squeezed it hard.
[XIV]
Joe Cary's rude and reckless words had an effect, although perhaps not the one he had hoped. But they did make Tessie think of something besides Mr. Bill, her new frocks and her new pleasures. The interruption of the Evergreen banquet did not bother her long, for that was a problem for the store detective to solve. But Joe Cary made her realize that the Sunshine Islands were more than a throne and a bank for their queen. It was odd that, when Tessie returned to the Waloo, she should find Granny reading one of the big books in which there was an entire chapter devoted to "The Pearl of the Pacific—The Sunshine Islands." Granny looked up from a picture of sea and palms when Tessie came in.
"Tessie," she began at once, "are you sure you're going to like being a queen for a lot of naked cannibals?"
"Why, Granny!" Tessie stood still and stared at her. What did Granny mean? Of course Joe Cary had been talking to her, and for a moment Tessie hated him. She didn't care if he had been her only friend when she was a salesgirl at the Evergreen. She quite forgot that he had taken her to a moving-picture show once in two weeks. "What's the matter now?" she asked impatiently. "Have people been complaining about Ka-kee-ta again?" For there were people who had complained of Ka-kee-ta, and it must be confessed that it was disconcerting to a timid woman, or even a brave man, to walk down a dimly lighted corridor and find oneself face to face with a bare-footed colored man, in loosely fitting blue clothes; a man with a tattooed nose and frizzled hair stiffened with cocoanut oil, and carrying a shining ax. Tessie herself would have shrieked if she had come upon such a man in a dimly lighted corridor. As it was, she often felt like screaming when she saw him, and just now, after her talk with Joe, she was impatient. "What is it now, Granny?" she wanted to know. A lot of her nervous impatience was in her voice as she stood in front of Granny, and there was more nervous impatience in her frowning little face.
Granny looked up and sighed as she saw the slim little creature in a very modish frock and a very modish hat. Tessie was very, very different from the shabby little girl in the cheap black cotton dress, but that was no reason why Granny should sigh mournfully as she looked at her. Surely Granny did not want Tessie to be the shabby little girl of those old days!