The Amazing Inheritance

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by Frances R. (Frances Roberta) Sterrett

I

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.

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