Twenty-one
Confusion—That’s all I can remember when I look back. Newspapermenasking questions—wanting interviews—masses of letters and telegrams—Greta coping with them—
The first really startling thing was that Ellie’s family were not as we sup-posed in America. It was quite a shock to find that most of them were actu-ally in England. It was understandable, perhaps, that Cora van Stuyvesantshould be. She was a very restless woman, always dashing across toEurope, to Italy, to Paris, to London and back again to America, to PalmBeach, out West to the ranch²; here, there and everywhere. On the actualday of Ellie’s death she had been not more than fifty miles away, still pur-suing her whim³ of having a house in England. She had rushed over to stayin London for two or three days and gone to fresh house agents for freshorders to view and had been touring round the country seeing half adozen on that particular day.
Stanford Lloyd, it turned out, had flown over in the same plane ostens-ibly for a business meeting in London. These people learnt of Ellie’s death,not from the cables which we had dispatched to the United States but fromthe public Press.
An ugly wrangle⁴ developed about where Ellie should be buried. I had as-sumed it was only natural that she’d be buried here where she had died.
Here where she and I had lived.
But Ellie’s family objected violently to this. They wanted the bodybrought to America to be buried with her forebears. Where her grand-father and her father, her mother and others had been laid to rest. I sup-pose it was natural, really, when one comes to think of it.
Andrew Lippincott came down to talk to me about it. He put the matterin a reasonable way.
“She never left any directions as to where she wished to be buried,” hepointed out to me.
“Why should she?” I demanded hotly. “How old was she—twenty-one?
You don’t think at twenty-one you’re going to die. You don’t start thinkingthen the way you want to be buried. If we’d ever thought about it we’d as-sume we’d be buried together somewhere even if we didn’t die at thesame time. But who thinks of death in the middle of life?”
“A very just observation,” said Mr. Lippincott. Then he said, “I’m afraidyou’ll also have to come to America, you know. There’s a great deal ofbusiness interests you’ll have to look into.”

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