For one surprised moment T.A. Buck stared in silence. Then a roar broke from him. "Not exactly bad!" he boomed between laughs. "Not exactly b--Not ex_act_ly, eh?" Then he was off again.

Mrs. McChesney surveyed him in hurt and dignified silence.

Then--"Well, really, T.A., don't mind me. What you find so exquisitely funny--"

"That's the funniest part of it! That you, of all people, shouldn't see the joke. Not exactly bad!" He wiped his eyes. "Why, do you mean to tell me that because your young cub of a son, by a heaven-sent stroke of good fortune, has landed a job that men twice his age would give their eyeteeth to get, I find you sitting at the telephone looking as if he had run off with Annie the cook, or had had a leg cut off!"

"I suppose it is funny. Only, the joke's on me. That's why I can't see it. It means that I'm losing him."

"That's the first selfish word I've ever heard you utter."

"Oh, don't think I'm not happy at his success. Happy! Haven't I hoped for it, and worked for it, and prayed for it! Haven't I saved for it, and skimped for it! How do you think I could have stood those years on the road if I hadn't kept up courage with the thought that it was all for him? Don't I know how narrowly Jock escaped being the wrong kind! I'm his mother, but I'm not quite blind. I know he had the making of a first-cla.s.s cad. I've seen him start off in the wrong direction a hundred times."

"If he has turned out a success, it's because you've steered him right. I've watched you make him over. And now, when his big chance has come, you--"

"I don't expect you to understand," interrupted Emma McChesney a little wearily. "I know it sounds crazy and unreasonable. There's only one sort of human being who could understand what I mean.

That's a woman with a son." She laughed 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 d.i.c.kens 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 covering the mouthpiece--"and if he thinks that he can work off a lot of last year's silk swatches on--h.e.l.lo! Yes, Mrs. McChesney talking. Look here, Mr.

Baumgartner--"

And for the time being Emma McChesney, mother, was relegated to the background, while Emma McChesney, secretary of the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, held the stage.

Having said that she would be home at five-thirty. Mrs. McChesney was home at five-thirty, being that kind of a person. Jock came in at six, breathless, bright-eyed, eager, and late, being that kind of a person.

He found his mother on the floor before the chiffonier in his bedroom, surrounded by piles of pajamas, socks, shirts and collars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He found his mother on the floor ... surrounded by piles of pajamas, socks, shirts and collars"]

He swooped down upon her from the doorway. "What do you think of your blue-eyed boy! Poor, eh?"

Emma McChesney looked up absently. "Jock, these medium-weights of yours didn't wear at all, and you paid five dollars for them."

"Medium-weights! What in--"

"You've enough silk socks to last you the rest of your natural life. Handkerchiefs, too. But you'll need pajamas."

Jock stooped, gathered up an armful of miscellaneous undergarments and tossed them into an open drawer. Then he shut the drawer with a bang, reached over, grasped his mother firmly under the arms and brought her to her feet with a swing.

"We will now consider the question of summer underwear ended.

Would it bore you too much to touch lightly on the subject of your son's future?"

Emma McChesney, tall, straight, handsome, looked up at her son, taller, straighter, handsomer. Then she took him by the coat lapels and hugged him.

"You were so bursting with your own glory that I couldn't resist teasing you. Besides, I had to do something to keep my mind off--off--"

"Why, Blonde dear, you're not--!"

"No, I'm not," gulped Emma McChesney. "Don't flatter yourself, young 'un. Tell me just how it happened. From the beginning." She perched at the side of the bed. Jock, hands in pockets, hair a little rumpled, paced excitedly up and down before her as he talked.

"There wasn't any beginning. That's the stunning part of it. I just landed right into the middle of it with both feet. I knew they had been planning to start a big Western branch. But we all thought they'd pick some big man for it. There are plenty of medium-cla.s.s dubs to be had. The kind that answers the ad: 'Manager wanted, young man, preferably married, able to furnish A-1 reference.' They're as thick as advertising men in Detroit on Monday morning. But we knew that this Western branch was going to be given an equal chance with the New York office. Those big Western advertisers like to give their money to Western firms if they can. So we figured that they'd pick a real top-notcher--even Hopper, or Hupp, maybe--and start out with a bang. So when the Old Man called me into his office this morning I was as unconscious as a babe. Well, you know Berg. He's as unexpected as a summer shower and twice as full of electricity.

"'Morning, McChesney!' he said. 'That a New York necktie you're wearing?'

"'Strictly,' says I.

"'Ever try any Chicago ties?'

"'Not from choice. That time my suit case went astray--'

"'M-m-m-m, yes.' He drummed his fingers on the table top a couple of times. Then--McChesney, what have you learned about advertising in the last two and a half years?'

"I was wise enough as to Bartholomew Berg to know that he didn't mean any cut-and-dried knowledge. He didn't mean rules of the game. He meant tricks.

"'Well,' I said, 'I've learned to watch a man's eyes when I'm talking business to him. If the pupils of his eyes dilate he's listening to you, and thinking about what you're saying. When they contract it means that he's only faking interest, even though he's looking straight at you and wearing a rapt expression. His thoughts are miles away.'

"'That so?' said Berg, and sort of grinned. 'What else?'

"'I've learned that one negative argument is worth six positive ones; that it never pays to knock your compet.i.tor; that it's wise to fight shy of that joker known as "editorial cooperation."'

"'That so?' said Berg. 'Anything else?'