The Inheritance Contract

Tessie Gilfooly was a queen.

A queen! Just imagine! It was far more unbelievable to Tessie than it can possibly be to you. She stared at the man who had brought her the amazing news. A queen!

A minute before and Tessie had been only a big-eyed, dreamy salesgirl in the hardware department of Waloo's largest department store, the Evergreen. Mr. Walker, the long, thin head of the department, had just reprimanded her severely because she had given a customer an aluminum saucepan when the customer had asked for an aluminum frying-pan.

"You must pay more attention to what customers ask for, Miss Gilfooly," scowled Mr. Walker.

"She asked for a saucepan," insisted Tessie stubbornly. Tessie was tired of being blamed for the mistakes of other people.

"Well, she wanted a frying-pan," Mr. Walker said, and his tone was short and crisp, like the best pastry. "In the Evergreen, Miss Gilfooly, a customer is to get what she wants. And the customer is always right! We have to make that rule so we'll keep our customers. Don't let this happen again!"

As he walked away two big tears gathered in Miss Gilfooly's blue eyes. The injustice of the world and especially of long, thin Mr. Walker, who would stand by an unreasonable customer instead of by a tired salesgirl, made her sick.

And now she was a queen!

It does sound unbelievable. But after all you need not lift your black or your brown or your yellow eyebrows and say it is impossible. Far more impossible stories appear in your newspaper every day. Just this morning there was a tale of a set of china, one hundred and ten pieces, which was stolen from a residence on the River Drive and carried across the Mississippi River into Wisconsin and returned to its owner without one of the hundred and ten pieces being broken or even nicked. To prove this surprising story there were statements from Mrs. Joshua Cabot, who had been robbed, and from Stuttering Jimmie, the robber, who had showed that he was a quick and expert packer. Without the statement of Mrs. Joshua Cabot, easily the leader of the Waloo younger matrons, you never would have believed the tale, but no one could question the word of young Mrs. Joshua Cabot. Whoever made the phrase that truth is stranger than fiction knew exactly what he was talking about for nothing could have been stranger than for a burglar to steal a full set of Wedgewood china or for Tessie Gilfooly to find herself a queen with a real kingdom and some thousands of real subjects.

Only that morning Tessie had grumbled and twisted her face into a most unbecoming scowl because life for her was just a dreary, weary round of work. She found fault with her oatmeal and skim milk because they were not strawberries and thick yellow cream and was just as annoying and disagreeable as a discontented girl of nineteen could possibly be.

"I never have any fun!" she wailed, and her small brother Johnny, who was eating his oatmeal and skim milk as if they were strawberries and cream, looked at her in surprise. What was the matter with old Tessie this morning, anyway? "I never have anything!" went on Tessie passionately. "It isn't fair for some girls to have so much and for me to have nothing at all! Look at Ethel Kingley!" she told Granny fiercely, although she must have known that Granny's eyes, keen as they were, could never penetrate the hundreds of frame and brick and stucco houses which separated the shabby little Gilfooly cottage from the big brick and stucco mansion which housed the Kingleys. "Ethel Kingley has everything in the world, and I haven't anything at all! It isn't fair! It isn't fair! Ethel Kingley's shoes cost more than I earn in a week. She has a new dress every day and I've worn this cheap sateen rag all spring! Ethel Kingley goes to bridge parties and dances! You can read about them in the Gazette! And I only go to bed! Ethel Kingley's brother-" The color rushed into her pale face as she spoke of the lordly Bill Kingley, "is the most wonderful man!" Words failed her as she thought of Ethel Kingley's wonderful brother.

"I'm a Boy Scout!" interrupted Johnny, eager to remind her that her own brother, young as he was, was wonderful too.

Tessie sniffed at him and at all Boy Scouts and went on with her grievances. When a quart measure is full it must overflow if anything more is poured into it, and Tessie was just full of grievances. "And Ethel Kingley has heaps of men friends to take her out and give her a good time!"

"You've got Joe," reminded Granny. "A face is a better guide to what a man is than clothes, Tessie Gilfooly! You take my word for it. Joe Cary is one in a thousand. His money's ready the minute it's due, every Saturday night as regular as the clock." For Joe had occupied the front room of the shabby little cottage ever since he had returned from France. "Now look here, my girl!" She regarded Tessie over her spectacles with kind but firm eyes. "It's plain to be seen that you got out of the wrong side of bed this morning. You're old enough to know that there are two kinds of folks in the world, those who have and those who haven't. The good Lord thought best to put you in with the 'haven'ts' and if he didn't give you the brains to climb up to the 'haves' there isn't any use in complaining and fault-finding to me. Here you are, young and healthy and with a nice job at the Evergreen--"

"Selling aluminum!" interrupted Tessie passionately.

"Selling aluminum," Granny repeated firmly. "You know very well that you're a lucky girl to have me and Johnny to look after you and Joe Cary for a friend to take you to the movies and--"

"One movie in two weeks!" exclaimed Tessie indignantly.

"And one more than you deserve when you act like this! You've done enough complaining for one morning, my girl. And if you don't want to be late and have your pay docked you'll take that frown off your face and put on a smile with your hat and run along. And I'll have some nice liver and onions for dinner so you'll have something pleasant to look forward to all day."

A glance at the old clock ticking so patiently on the shelf proved to Tessie that Granny told the truth. She pushed back her chair and rose to her feet, a pathetic, shabby little person with her white face in which the purple shadows made her eyes look big and purple-blue. Her yellow hair was bunched over her ears in the ugly fashion of the day and was really responsible for her tirade, for it had proved unmanageable that morning and almost refused to bunch itself over her little ears. And you know how irritating it is when your hair is unmanageable.

"Granny," she began, and her lip quivered. She was an honest little soul, and she could not go away and leave Granny without some word of apology. "It isn't because I don't appreciate you and all you do for me but it's-it's-" She stopped and looked at Granny with eyes drowned in tears.

"I know," exclaimed Granny comfortingly, and she slipped her arm around the slim figure. "I know! I don't blame you a mite! It isn't fair for good little things like you to have to go without fun and pretties. Every girl has a right to be a queen for a while, and it's remembering the days when she was queening it that help to make the other days bearable. Yes, my lamb, old Granny understands, and she don't blame you a mite. But just you wait! The good Lord'll get around to the Gilfoolys some day, and then see what you'll get. You're a good little girl if you ain't that wonderful Miss Kingley!" And she hugged the good little girl and sent her away. "No, it ain't fair," she repeated as she waved her hand from the door.

"What ain't fair?" asked Johnny, who was eating Tessie's discarded oatmeal and skim milk.

"Life," Granny told him thoughtfully. "Life never seems fair to young eyes, Johnny. It's only when you're old and wear glasses that you can see maybe it isn't as bad as you thought it was."

Life seemed anything but fair to Tessie as she stood among the aluminum, smarting at the unjustness of Mr. Walker and with her eyes filled with tears. Before the tears fell on her cheeks she heard a man behind her black sateen back ask doubtfully:

"I beg your pardon, but can you tell me where I'll find Miss Teresa Gilfooly?"

Tessie flirted her hand across her eyes and swung around to stare into the smiling face of a very good-looking young man. She stopped thinking that the world was unjust and discovered that it was showing a kindly partiality to one Teresa Gilfooly when such a good-looking young man was asking for her. What could he want? The only way to hear was to ask.

"I'm Tessie Gilfooly," she said shyly and pinkly, and when Tessie was pink and shy she was adorable.

The good-looking young man seemed surprised and pleased. Perhaps he had thought that big fat Mrs. Slawson was Teresa Gilfooly. "No!" he said, as if he could not believe that she was slim little Tessie. "I've some good news for you!" And he smiled radiantly. There was some fun in carrying good news to a pretty girl. And such good news! He gave it to her all in one piece. He did not believe in breaking the good news into small portions. "You're a queen!" he exclaimed. "Queen Teresa of the Sunshine Islands!" And he grinned. It made a pleasant break in the day's work to tell a big-eyed girl that she was a queen. It turned law into melodrama-very nice melodrama.