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-class 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.