om--the boy who was learning his lesson.

Half an hour later she reentered the hotel, her cheeks glowing. Jock was
not yet down. So she ordered and ate her wise and cautious breakfast of
fruit and cereal and toast and coffee, skimming over her morning paper
as she ate. At 7:30 she was back in the lobby, newspaper in hand. The
Bisons were already astir. She seated herself in a deep chair in a quiet
corner, her eyes glancing up over the top of her paper toward the
stairway. At eight o'clock Jock McChesney came down.

There was nothing of jauntiness about him. His eyelids were red. His
face had the doughy look of one whose sleep has been brief and feverish.
As he came toward his mother you noticed a stain on his coat, and a
sunburst of wrinkles across one leg of his modish brown trousers.

"Good-morning, son!" said Emma McChesney. "Was it as bad as that?"

Jock McChesney's long fingers curled into a fist.

"Say," he began, his tone venomous, "do you know what
those--those--those----"

"Say it!" commanded Emma McChesney. "I'm only your mother. If you keep
that in your system your breakfast will curdle in your stomach."

Jock McChesney said it. I know no phrase better fitted to describe his
tone than that old favorite of the erotic novelists. It was vibrant with
passion. It breathed bitterness. It sizzled with savagery. It--Oh,
alliteration is useless.

"Well," said Emma McChesney, encouragingly, "go on."

"Well!" gulped Jock McChesney, and glared; "those two double-bedded,
bloomin', blasted Bisons came in at twelve, and the single one about
fifteen minutes later. They didn't surprise me. There was a herd of
about ninety-three of 'em in the hall, all saying good-night to each
other, and planning where they'd meet in the morning, and the time, and
place and probable weather conditions. For that matter, there were
droves of 'em pounding up and down the halls all night. I never saw such
restless cattle. If you'll tell me what makes more noise in the middle
of the night than the metal disk of a hotel key banging and clanging up
against a door, I'd like to know what it is. My three Bisons were all
dolled up with fool ribbons and badges and striped paper canes. When
they switched on the light I gave a crack imitation of a tired working
man trying to get a little sleep. I breathed regularly and heavily, with
an occasional moaning snore. But if those two hippopotamus Bisons had
been alone on their native plains they couldn'