Mrs. McChesney often said, "that
I wasn't cursed with a life of ease. These
massage-at-ten-fitting-at-eleven-bridge-at-one women
always look such hags at thirty-five."

But repetition will ruin the rarest of jokes. As the weeks went on
and Jock's attitude persisted, the twinkle in Emma McChesney's eye
died. The glow of growing resentment began to burn in its place.
Now and then there crept into her eyes a little look of doubt and
bewilderment. You sometimes see that same little shocked, dazed
expression in the eyes of a woman whose husband has just said,
"Isn't that hat too young for you?"

Then, one evening, Emma McChesney's resentment flared into open
revolt. She had announced that she intended to rise half an hour
earlier each morning in order that she might walk a brisk mile or
so on her way down-town, before taking the subway.

"But won't it tire you too much, Mother?" Jock had asked with
maddeningly tender solicitude.

His mother's color heightened. Her blue eyes glowed dark.

"Look here, Jock! Will you kindly stop this lean-on-me-grandma
stuff! To hear you talk one would think I was ready for a wheel
chair and gray woolen bedroom slippers."

"Why, I didn't mean--I only thought that perhaps overexertion in a
woman of your--That is, you need your energy for--"

"Don't wallow around in it," snapped Emma McChesney. "You'll only
sink in deeper in your efforts to crawl out. I merely want to warn
you that if you persist in this pose of tender solicitude for your
doddering old mother, I'll--I'll present you with a stepfather a
year younger than you. Don't laugh. Perhaps you think I couldn't
do it."

"Good Lord, Mother! Of course you don't mean it, but--"

"Mean it! Cleverer women than I have been driven by their
children to marrying bell-boys in self-defense. I warn you!"

[Illustration: "'Good Lord, Mother! Of course you don't
mean it, but--'"]

That stopped it--for a while. Jock ceased to bestow upon his
mother judicious advice from the vast storehouse of his own
experience. He refrained from breaking out with elaborate
advertising schemes whereby the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat
Company might grind every other skirt concern to dust. He gave
only a startled look when his mother mischievously suggested
raspberry as the color for her new autumn suit. Then, quite
suddenly, Circumstance caught Emma McChesney in the meshes and,
before she had fought her way free, wrought trouble and change
upon her.