The telegram said:
Mrs. Thomas Beck’s funeral will take place on Thursday at 11 A. M.
It was dated Chicago, and signed “Herbert Beck.”
“Who is Mrs. Beck?” asked Mr. Shelton, crossly; the morning was not his happiest time.
“She is my first cousin, once removed,” Mrs. Shelton answered, with painstaking accuracy. “You must remember her, John. She was my bridesmaid, and we corresponded for years after she married and moved to Chicago until”—here Mrs. Shelton’s pale face flushed—-“I once asked her to lend me some money, and told her how badly things were going with us, and she refused—very unkindly, I thought at the time; but perhaps it was just as well—we might never have paid it back.”
It was Mr. Shelton’s turn to flush, but he only said, irritably:
“And why the devil should they think you want to go to her funeral?”
Mrs. Shelton professed herself unable to guess, unless the fact that the family was nearly extinct had led her cousin to remember her on her deathbed.
“Well, they might have saved themselves the expense of the telegram,” Mr. Shelton grumbled, adding, sarcastically, “unless they would like to pay our expenses to Chicago, and entertain us when we get there!”
It appeared later that was exactly what they hoped to do. A registered letter, written at Mrs. Beck’s request, when her death was approaching, arrived within an hour. She begged her cousin’s forgiveness for past unkindness, told her that she had left her the savings of her lifetime—though the main part of the estate passed to Mr. Beck’s nephew—and besought Mrs. Shelton, as her only relation, to follow her to her grave. Young Mr. Beck, the said nephew, who wrote the letter, added that the house should be kept up for Mrs. Shelton’s convenience till after her visit, and that his aunt had expressed a wish that her clothes and jewels should be given to Mrs. Shelton.