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“Well, s’ long then, Shrimp. See you at eight.”

And he swung around and faced them.

That sick horror of uncertainty which had clutched at Emma McChesney when first she saw the weasel’s back held her with awful certainty now. But ten years on the road had taught her self-control, among other things. So she looked steadily and calmly into her son’s scarlet face. Jock’s father had been a liar.

She put her hand on the boy’s arm.

“You’re a day ahead of schedule, Jock,” she said evenly.

“So are you,” retorted Jock, sullenly, his hands jammed into his pockets.

“All the better for both of us, Kid. I was just going over to the hotel to clean up, Jock. Come along, boy.”

The boy’s jaw set. His eyes sought any haven but that of Emma McChesney’s eyes. “I can’t,” he said, his voice very low. “I’ve an engagement to take dinner with a bunch of the fellows. We’re going down to the Inn. Sorry.”

A certain cold rigidity settled over Emma McChesney’s face. She eyed her son in silence until his miserable eyes, perforce, looked up into hers.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to break your engagement,” she said.

She turned to face Mary Cutting’s regretful, understanding gaze. Her eyebrows lifted slightly. Her head inclined ever so little in the direction of the half-scared, half-defiant “chicken.”

“You attend to your chicken, Mary,” she said. “I’ll see to my weasel.”

So Emma McChesney and her son Jock, looking remarkably like brother and sister, walked down the broad store aisles and out into the street. There was little conversation between them. When the pillared entrance of the hotel came into sight Jock broke the silence, sullenly:

“Why do you stop at that old barracks? It’s a rotten place for a woman. No one stops there but clothing salesmen and boobs who still think it’s Chicago’s leading hotel. No place for a lady.”

“Any place in the world is the place for a lady, Jock,” said Emma McChesney quietly.

Automatically she started toward the clerk’s desk. Then she remembered, and stopped. “I’ll wait here,” she said. “Get the key for five-eighteen, will you please? And tell the clerk that I’ll want the room adjoining beginning to-night, instead of to-morrow, as I first intended. Tell him you’re Mrs. McChesney’s son.”

He turned away. Emma McChesney brought her handkerchief up to her mouth and held it there a moment, and the skin showed white over the knuckles of her hand. in that moment every one of her thirty-six years were on the table, face up.

“We’ll wash up,” said Emma McChesney, when he returned, “and then we’ll have dinner here.”

“I don’t want to eat here,” objected Jock McChesney. “Besides, there’s no reason why I can’t keep my evening’s engagements.”

“And after dinner,” went on his mother, as though she had not heard, “we’ll get acquainted, Kid.”

It was a cheerless, rather tragic meal, though Emma McChesney saw it through from soup to finger-bowls. When it was over she led the way down the old-fashioned, red-carpeted corridors to her room. It was the sort of room to get on its occupant’s nerves at any time, with its red plush arm-chairs, its black walnut bed, and its walnut center table inlaid with an apoplectic slab of purplish marble.

Emma McChesney took off her hat before the dim old mirror, and stood there, fluffing out her hair here, patting it there. Jock had thrown his hat and coat on the bed. He stood now, leaning against the foo
tboard, his legs crossed, his chin on his breast, his whole attitude breathing sullen defiance.

“Jock,” said his mother, still patting her hair, “perhaps you don’t know it, but you’re pouting just as you used to when you wore pinafores. I always hated pouting children. I’d rather hear them howl. I used to spank you for it. I have prided myself on being a modern mother, but I want to mention, in passing, that I’m still in a position to enforce that ordinance against pouting.” She turned around abruptly. “Jock, tell me, how did you happen to come here a day ahead of me, and how do you happen to be so chummy with that pretty, weak- faced little thing at the veiling counter, and how, in the name of all that’s unbelievable, have you managed to become a grown-up in the last few months?”