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.”