“I had made a quick trip to Europe on business. My wife reported no letters from your mother on my return. I wrote, and received word that they had moved. I found the new address after considerable trouble. No one was there. A new family had moved in. The word was that all had died of the ‘flu’ or something of the sort. I heard several conflicting stories. The one nearest the truth, according to what I found out about you, was that your father, half ill, started East with you and that your mother died at the hospital, either before or after that time.”
“He told Grandmother that my mother had died,” Jannet supplied.
“I see. There is only one thing, Jannet, that has made me feel strange about it all, and that is a telegram that I found after a long time. Date and address were torn off. Some one in the household had made a mistake. It blew at my feet from some pile of rubbish back where it is burned.”
Mr. Van Meter pulled out a drawer in his desk and took from it a piece of yellow paper, such as is used in telegrams. He handed it to Jannet.
“If you feel so I can never again set foot in your house.” This was the message that the surprised Jannet read. She looked up into her uncle’s face in inquiry.
“Why, that reminds me of a slip of paper that I found in a book. Perhaps just your not replying to something may have made her send the telegram.”
“I did not think of that. I was away,—what was the slip of paper?”
Jannet handed to her uncle the slip which she had found. He frowned over it, reading it more than once and looking off into space as if trying to recall something. “I never saw that before, Jannet,” said he, handing it back to her. “This looks pretty serious, Jannet. It looks as if you owe to some unfriendly hand the fact that your mother was so separated from us and that you have been among strangers since your grandmother’s death.”
“Do you think that my mother could possibly be alive somewhere?”
“Of course I do not know the date of this telegram, but the word of her death seemed so clear that I never tried to trace the telegram after finding it. I would not cherish such a possibility, Jannet. Wherever she is, in that other world that she believed in, she will be glad that you are here, and I am glad to have an opportunity to make up to you what I seemed in her eyes to lack.” Mr. Van Meter spoke kindly, but a little bitterly at the last.