IN the course of a long and varied life, Miss Editha Greer had been consistently eccentric. In the close of it she was not less so. Witness the following telegram received by her great-nephew, Jeremy Robson:

Philadelphia, July 30, 1912

I am dead. Do not come to funeral. Letter follows.

E. Greer.

To say that the recipient of this posthumous message was overcome with grief, would be excessive. His feeling for his aged relative had been one of mild and remote piety, relieved by an intermittent sense of amusement, and impregnated with a vague dread of what she might do next. No more next now for E. Greer. Jeremy was honestly sorry; not on his own account, but for the old lady herself. She had so enjoyed life! Doubtless she had relinquished it with courage; but, also, he felt certain, with profound dissent from the verdict. But, having duly dismissed him from consideration in her lifetime, what should she be writing him about now that she was dead?

Like the telegram, the letter, when it arrived, proved to be an anticipatory document. It dealt, in a frank and unflattering style, with Jeremy’s expectations upon her property which, she observed characteristically, was much less than most fools supposed.

I have long considered you a bit of a ninny [continued this pleasing document]. Nor have I valid cause to alter my opinion. But I recently met at a country house a young woman who knows you. [Jeremy’s heart performed a porpoise-roll within his breast.] She tells me that I am an old fool. I interpret her expression and bearing, not her words, which are that I do not understand you. Apparently she believes that she does. If I left you all my money, she would perhaps marry you for it. On the whole, however, I believe not. She has neglected much more brilliant opportunities here. Moreover, when I put the question to her, she said not. She added that I was impertinent, and that impertinence was no more tolerable from the old to the young than from the young to the old. I like your Miss Marcia Ames.

The point of importance is that she considers the modest, in fact I may say nominal and complimentary, sum set apart for you in my will, quite insufficient. We discussed it at length. She is possessed of a devil of frankness. She maintains that I should leave you a modest competency. She thinks that it might save your immortal soul, if I correctly interpret her attitude. She thinks your immortal soul is worth saving. She assumes that you have an immortal soul. She even appeared to think that I have an immortal soul. Upon that moot point I shall be better able to judge by the time this letter goes forward to you; but it is improbable that I shall communicate any further or more authoritative information.

She is a strange creature. You should have married her, though she is far too old for you. A hundred years at least. I judge you might have married her but lost your chance. [Here the reader groaned.] She might have made a success of you. I gravely doubt whether my money can.

Do not hastily assume that the money is within your grasp. There is a condition to be fulfilled. I believe that you will not fulfill it. She believes that you will, even though she does not know what it is. Nor shall you. Whether you receive a small pittance or a roundly comfortable sum, depends now entirely upon yourself. I am still malicious enough—I forget that I am now, as you read this, dead and safely buried—I was still malicious enough to wish that I might see your struggles of mind upon receiving this, the last communication wherewith you will ever be troubled from

Your dutiful great-aunt,

E. Greer.

Perturbation over the prospect of comparative enrichment was quite subordinated, as Jeremy read this curious epistle, to the turbulence of emotion excited by the knowledge that Marcia had been interesting herself so intimately in his affairs. So far, the joke turned against Great-Aunt Greer. But she was more than avenged by the sting in her surmise that Jem had forfeited his chance with Marcia. Where was Marcia? If he got the money, or the assurance of it, why should he not set out to find her, even though it took him across the world, and try once more? Would she have the force to escape from him again? Was not her flight the initial confession, upon which her queer relations with E. Greer set the seal? Only as an afterthought came the consideration of the condition upon which he was to secure the larger legacy. He could not seem to get excited or disturbed over it. Nothing mattered much in the bleak soul of Jeremy Robson but Marcia Ames. Great-Aunt Greer would have been sorely disgusted! Or, perhaps she would n’t.

Three days thereafter a caller came to see Jeremy at The Record office. His card indicated that he was Mr. Arthur Welton, representing the firm of Hunt & Hunt, Attorneys, Philadelphia. His appearance indicated that he was about Jeremy’s age. His bearing indicated that he was older than Pharaoh’s uncle, and charged with world-destinies. Jeremy had a shrewd guess that this was his first mission away from home.

Mr. Welton looked Jeremy over minutely and shook hands. The firm of Hunt & Hunt, which he had the honor to represent, had charge of the affairs of Miss Editha Greer, deceased, he informed Mr. Robson. Would Mr. Robson kindly put on his coat?

“Do you want me to go out with you?” asked Jeremy.

“As you prefer.”

“What’s the matter with this? Nobody will interrupt us here.”

“Very well.” The age-old youth wrapped himself in an air of superior expectancy.

“Go ahead,” said the reporter.

“The coat,” reminded Mr. Welton.

Jeremy was annoyed. “Why the devil should I put on a coat with the mercury ramping around 90?”

“A mere formality,” murmured his visitor.

“Oh, very well!” growled Jeremy. He departed and presently returned, fully and uncomfortably garmented.

Again Mr. Arthur Welton inspected him carefully. “You do not wear mourning, I observe.”

“I do not.”

“Why not, may I ask?”

“Don’t believe in it. It’s a pagan custom and usually hypocritical.”

“I cannot agree with you,” retorted the other weightily. “On principle, I cannot agree with you. In the present instance, would it be an evidence of hypocrisy to have shown a formal mark of sorrow for the loss of your great-aunt?”

“It would.”

“You felt, then, no affection or esteem for the late Miss Editha Greer?”

“What business is that of yours?”

“It is so much the business of my firm that I have traveled a thousand miles to ascertain your attitude.”

“The condition!” cried Jeremy, aloud. “I beg your pardon,” he added. “If you had told me that this was a legal cross-examination—”

“Not precisely that, Mr. Robson. I should have thought that you would appreciate its purport,” returned the other in a tone of grave rebuke.

“I do.” There was a grim set to the other’s lips. “I know Aunt Edie well enough to appreciate her practical jokes.”

“Really, Mr. Robson! I am bound to protest against the assumption that our late client—”

“All right! All right! I withdraw it. Fire ahead.”

Mr. Arthur Weston looked delicately but impressively pained. “You felt no affection or esteem for the deceased?” he inquired through pursed lips.

“I liked the old lady, in a way,” confessed Jeremy reminiscently. “She had such a cheery spice of the devil in her. And her tongue! And her pen! Oh, Lord! What an editorial writer she’d have made, if she could have kept out of jail.”

“I need hardly tell you, Mr. Robson, that she gravely disapproved of your journalistic predilections.”

“Nobody need tell me after she got through. Nobody need tell anybody anything that my Great-Aunt Greer had told ’em first.”

“In order that the record may be clear, let me put this to you. It is admitted that you disapprove of symbolical mourning; that you do not practice it. If you did practice it, would you have worn mourning for the deceased Miss Greer?”

“If the dog had n’t stopped to scratch the flea would he have caught the rabbit?” retorted the irreverent Mr. Robson.

“I must insist upon a reply.”

“No; I certainly shouldn’t. Why should I? I’m not grieving over Aunt Edie’s death. She’s no real loss to me. Nor gain, either, now,” he added with a rueful grin. “I’m not going to pretend. So, you see, there’s not even a mitigating circumstance.”

“Mitigating circ—”

“Good legal phrase, is n’t it? Oh, I understand your errand perfectly. Aunt Edie wrote me that there was a ‘condition’ to the legacy that I would n’t fulfill. If you’d come out here and found me all swathed up in black like a mummy, and with a funereal gulp in my voice when I spoke of my dear old Auntie, and the general manners of an undertaker right on the job, I expect it might have been worth twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars to me. Even a mourning band on my coat and a few appropriate sighs in the right place might have got me five or ten thousand. Maybe if I’d stopped to figure it out, I’d have dressed the part. A fellow will do a good deal for money. Then again, maybe I would n’t.” The memory of Marcia’s frank and lustrous eyes checked him. Could he have met their challenge, with the black badge of hypocrisy on him? “No! I’m damned if I would!” he declared with profound sincerity. “So there you have it. I know where I get off, and I don’t much care, to tell the truth. I lose.”

The overweighted legal victim of responsibilities almost too heavy to be borne, slowly and accurately gathered up his hat, his gloves, his cane, his portfolio, and his eye-glasses in the absorbed manner of one taking an inventory. He bowed a solemn and professional farewell to Mr. Robson. At the door he paused. A gleam as of some faint, inward flickering of the eternal human which must at times assert itself even through the cerements of legal procedure, appeared upon his pink and careworn features.

“No,” he pronounced profoundly. “You win.”