ed a little shamefacedly.
"I'm talking like the chorus of a minor-wail sob song, but it's
the truth."

"If you feel like that, Emma, tell him to stay. The boy wouldn't
go if he thought it would make you unhappy."

"Not go!" cried Emma McChesney sharply. "I'd like to see him dare
to refuse it!"

"Well then, what in--" began Buck, bewildered.

"Don't try to understand it, T.A. It's no use. Don't try to poke
your finger into the whirligig they call 'Woman's Sphere.' Its
mechanism is too complicated. It's the same quirk that makes women
pray for daughters and men for sons. It's the same kink that makes
women read the marriage and death notices first in a newspaper.
It's the same queer strain that causes a mother to lavish the most
love on the weakest, wilfullest child. Perhaps I wouldn't have
loved Jock so much if there hadn't been that streak of yellow in
him, and if I hadn't had to work so hard to dilute it until now
it's only a faint cream color. There ought to be a special prayer
for women who are bringing up their sons alone."

Buck stirred a little uneasily. "I've never heard you talk like
this before."

"You probably never will again." She swung round to her desk.

T.A. Buck, strolling toward the door, still wore the puzzled look.

"I don't know what makes you take this so seriously. Of course,
the boy will be a long way off. But then, you've been separated
from him before. What's the difference now?"

"T.A.," said Emma McChesney solemnly, "Jock will be drawing a
man-size salary now. Something tells me I'll be a grandmother in
another two years. Girls aren't letting men like Jock run around
loose. He'll be gobbled up. Just you wait."

"Oh, I don't know," drawled Buck mischievously. "You've just said
he's a headstrong young cub. He strikes me as the kind who'd
raise the dickens if his three-minute egg happened to be five
seconds overtime."

Emma McChesney swung around in her chair. "Look here, T.A. As
business partners we've quarreled about everything from silk
samples to traveling men, and as friends we've wrangled on every
subject from weather to war. I've allowed you to criticise my soul
theories, and my new spring hat. But understand that I'm the only
living person who has the right to villify my son, Jock
McChesney."

The telephone buzzed a punctuation to this period.

"Baumgartner?" inquired Buck humbly.

She listened a moment, then, over her shoulder,
"Baumgartner,"--grimly, her hand coveri