The fiddlers played a hymn as their own final contribution. Sheila smiled wistfully across the dusk to Peter. She knew it wouldn’t matter now, for Old King Cole was passing beyond the reach of hymns, prayers, or benedictions.
“It’s over as far as you or I or he are concerned,” she whispered, whimsically. “When I come down, by and by, would you very much mind taking me on one of those rides you promised? I want to forget that white-marble monument.”
It was not until a week later that Sheila O’Leary met with one of the big surprises of her rather eventful existence. A lawyer came down from New York and asked for her. It seemed that the coal magnate had left her a considerable number of thousands to spend for him and ease her feelings about the monument. The codicil was quaintly worded and stated that inasmuch as “Mother” had gone first, he guessed she would do the next best by him.
Sheila took Peter Brooks into her immediate confidence. “Half of it goes for typhoid research and half for a nurses’ home here. We’ve needed one dreadfully. What staggers me is when did he do it?”
Peter grinned. “When I happened to be on duty. We fixed it up, and I was to keep the secret. He had lots of fun over it—poor old soul!”
“Merry old soul,” corrected Sheila.
And when the nurses’ home was built Sheila flatly ignored all the suggestions of a memorial tablet with appropriate scriptural verses to grace the cornerstone or hang in the entrance-hall.
“Won’t have it—never do in the world! Just going to have his picture over the living-room fireplace.”
And there it hangs—a gigantic reproduction of Old King Cole, done by the greatest poster artist of America.