he living-room.

Jock sat up suddenly. He opened his mouth to answer. There issued
from his throat a strange and absurd little croak.

"Jock! Home?"

"Yes," answered Jock, and straightened up. But before he could
flick on his own light his mother stood in the doorway, a tall,
straight, buoyant figure.

"I got your wire and--Why, dear! In the dark! What--"

"Must have fallen asleep, I guess," muttered Jock. Somehow he
dreaded to turn on the lights.

And then, very quietly, Emma McChesney came in. She found him,
there in the dark, as surely as a mother bear finds her cubs in a
cave. She sat down beside him at the edge of the bed and put her
hand on his shoulder, and brought his head down gently to her
breast. And at that the room, which had been a man's room with its
pipe, its tobacco jar, its tie rack filled with cravats of
fascinating shapes and hues, became all at once a boy's room
again, and the man sitting there with straight, strong shoulders
and his little air of worldliness became in some miraculous way a
little boy again.

[Illustration: "... became in some miraculous way a little boy
again"]

III

DICTATED BUT NOT READ

About the time that Jock McChesney began to carry a yellow
walking-stick down to work each morning his mother noticed a
growing tendency on his part to patronize her. Now Mrs. Emma
McChesney, successful, capable business woman that she was, could
afford to regard her young son's attitude with a quiet and deep
amusement. In twelve years Emma McChesney had risen from the
humble position of stenographer in the office of the T.A. Buck
Featherloom Petticoat Company to the secretaryship of the firm. So
when her young son, backed by the profound business knowledge
gained in his one year with the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company,
hinted gently that her methods and training were archaic,
ineffectual, and lacking in those twin condiments known to the
twentieth century as pep and ginger, she would listen, eyebrows
raised, lower lip caught between her teeth--a trick which gives
a distorted expression to the features, calculated to hide any
lurking tendency to grin. Besides, though Emma McChesney was forty
she looked thirty-two (as business women do), and knew it. Her
hard-working life had brought her in contact with people, and
things, and events, and had kept her young.

[Illustration: "Jock McChesney began to carry a yellow
walking-stick down to work"]

"Thank fortune!"