Jock gathered up a sheaf of loose papers and brandished them in the air. "This is where I come in. I've got a plan here that will fetch this Griebler person. Oh, I'm not dreaming. I outlined it for Sam Hupp, and he was crazy about it. Sam Hupp had some sort of plan outlined himself. But he said this made his sound as dry as cigars in Denver. And you know yourself that Sam Hupp's copy is so brilliant that he could sell brewery advertising to a temperance magazine."
Emma McChesney stood up. She looked a little impatient, and a trifle puzzled. "But why all this talk! I don't get you. Take your plan to Mr. Berg. If it's what you think it is he'll see it quicker than any other human being, and he'll probably fall on your neck and invest you in royal robes and give you a mahogany desk all your own."
"Oh, what's the good!" retorted Jock disgustedly. "This Griebler has an appointment at the office to-morrow. He'll be closeted with the Old Man. They'll call in Hupp. But never a plan will they reveal. It's against their code of ethics. Ethics! I'm sick of the word. I suppose you'd say I'm lucky to be associated with a firm like that, and I suppose I am. But I wish in the name of all the gods of Business that they weren't so bloomin' conservative. Ethics! They're all balled up in 'em, like Henry James in his style."
Emma McChesney came over from her side of the table and stood very close to her son. She laid one hand very lightly on his arm and looked up into the sullen, angry young face.
"I've seen older men than you are, Jock, and better men, and bigger men, wearing that same look, and for the same reason. Every ambitious man or woman in business wears it at one time or another. Sooner or later, Jock, you'll have your chance at the money end of this game. If you don't care about the thing you call ethics, it'll be sooner. If you do care, it will be later. It rests with you, but it's bound to come, because you've got the stuff in you."
"Maybe," replied Jock the cynical. But his face lost some of its sullenness as he looked down at that earnest, vivid countenance up-turned to his. "Maybe. It sounds all right, Mother—in the story books. But I'm not quite solid on it. These days it isn't so much what you've got in you that counts as what you can bring out. I know the young man's slogan used to be 'Work and Wait,' or something pretty like that. But these days they've boiled it down to one word—'Produce'!"
"The marvel of it is that there aren't more of 'em," observed Emma McChesney sadly.
"More what?"