"Here," whispered Brower, "you'll have to take the most expensive. It's chestnut—fifteen dollars. Nothing else but plain pine for a dollar fifty. Shameful, isn't it?"
Brower arranged for the handles and the plates. He also met the family at the railway-station next day, and saw the casket put on board the east-bound express.
He and George were walking slowly up and down the platform alongside the train when a man in blue overalls leaned out of the door of the baggage-car and called to them. He held a paper in his hand.
"This ain't quite regular," he said. "Our road is pretty strict. The air-tight casket is all right for inter-state travel, but the doctor hasn't signed this certificate."
George turned on Brower with a look of anguish.
"Here!" cried Brower, stretching up his hand. "How forgetful of me! I'll sign it now. Go along, Ogden."
The man hesitated. "Not contagious?"
"Certainly not. Hand it down. Got a pencil? There! Here's a two. Take extra care."
The dead man's son paid for the music and flowers, his wife and daughter folded away his clothes, and his son-in-law undertook to see his estate through the courts.
"I don't believe you'd better pay the doctors and undertaker yet," he counselled. "Let them file their claims with the Probate people. It doesn't cost but a dollar, and if you pay without, you might be liable over again—you are on other claims. I'll keep a general eye on matters, of course, but questions will be coming up all the time. I don't know but what we'd better have a lawyer first as last. The Probate arrangements are different now from what they used to be—more expensive, for one thing. Now there's Freeze & Freeze—they're as good as any, and they're right there in the Clifton, George, only five floors above you."