His Mother’s Son
by
“Full?” repeated Emma McChesney (and if it weren’t for the compositor there’d be an exclamation point after that question mark).
“Sorry, Mrs. McChesney,” said the clerk, and he actually looked it, “but there’s absolutely nothing stirring. We’re full up. The Benevolent Brotherhood of Bisons is holding its regular annual state convention here. We’re putting up cots in the hall.”
Emma McChesney’s keen blue eyes glanced up from their inspection of the little bunch of mail which had just been handed her. “Well, pick out a hall with a southern exposure and set up a cot or so for me,” she said, agreeably; “because I’ve come to stay. After selling Featherloom Petticoats on the road for ten years I don’t see myself trailing up and down this town looking for a place to lay my head. I’ve learned this one large, immovable truth, and that is, that a hotel clerk is a hotel clerk. It makes no difference whether he is stuck back of a marble pillar and hidden by a gold vase full of thirty-six-inch American Beauty roses at the Knickerbocker, or setting the late fall fashions for men in Galesburg, Illinois.”
By one small degree was the perfect poise of the peerless personage behind the register jarred. But by only one. He was a hotel night clerk.
“It won’t do you any good to get sore, Mrs. McChesney,” he began, suavely. “Now a man would–“
“But I’m not a man,” interrupted Emma McChesney. “I’m only doing a man’s work and earning a man’s salary and demanding to be treated with as much consideration as you’d show a man.”
The personage busied himself mightily with a pen, and a blotter, and sundry papers, as is the manner of personages when annoyed. “I’d like to accommodate you; I’d like to do it.”
“Cheer up,” said Emma McChesney, “you’re going to. I don’t mind a little discomfort. Though I want to mention in passing that if there are any lady Bisons present you needn’t bank on doubling me up with them. I’ve had one experience of that kind. It was in Albia, Iowa. I’d sleep in the kitchen range before I’d go through another.”
Up went the erstwhile falling poise. “You’re badly mistaken, madam. I’m a member of this order myself, and a finer lot of fellows it has never been my pleasure to know.”
“Yes, I know,” drawled Emma McChesney. “Do you know, the thing that gets me is the inconsistency of it. Along come a lot of boobs who never use a hotel the year around except to loaf in the lobby, and wear out the leather chairs, and use up the matches and toothpicks and get the baseball returns, and immediately you turn away a traveling man who uses a three-dollar-a-day room, with a sample room downstairs for his stuff, who tips every porter and bell-boy in the place, asks for no favors, and who, if you give him a half-way decent cup of coffee for breakfast, will fall in love with the place and boom it all over the country. Half of your Benevolent Bisons are here on the European plan, with a view to patronizing the free-lunch counters or being asked to take dinner at the home of some local Bison whose wife has been cooking up on pies, and chicken salad and veal roast for the last week.”
Emma McChesney leaned over the desk a little, and lowered her voice to the tone of confidence. “Now, I’m not in the habit of making a nuisance of myself like this. I don’t get so chatty as a rule, and I know that I could jump over to Monmouth and get first-class accommodations there. But just this once I’ve a good reason for wanting to make you and myself a little miserable. Y’see, my son is traveling with me this trip.”
“Son!” echoed the clerk, staring.
“Thanks. That’s what they all do. After a while I’ll begin to believe that there must be something hauntingly beautiful and girlish about me or every one wouldn’t petrify when I announce that I’ve a six-foot son attached to my apron-strings. He looks twenty-one, but he’s seventeen. He thinks the world’s rotten because he can’t grow one of those fuzzy little mustaches that the men are cultivating to match their hats. He’s down at the depot now, straightening out our baggage. Now I want to say this before he gets here. He’s been out with me just four days. Those four days have been a revelation, an eye-opener, and a series of rude jolts. He used to think that his mother’s job consisted of traveling in Pullmans, eating delicate viands turned out by the hotel chefs, and strewing Featherloom Petticoats along the path. I gave him plenty of money, and he got into the habit of looking lightly upon anything more trifling than a five-dollar bill. He’s changing his mind by great leaps. I’m prepared to spend the night in the coal cellar if you’ll just fix him up–not too comfortably. It’ll be a great lesson for him. There he is now. Just coming in. Fuzzy coat and hat and English stick. Hist! As they say on the stage.”