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.
{Illustration: “'I'm still in position to enforce that ordinance against pouting'”}
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 footboard, 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?”
Jock regarded the mercifully faded roses in the carpet. His lower lip came forward again.
“Oh, a fellow can't always be tied to his mother's apron strings. I like to have a little fling myself. I know a lot of fellows here. They are frat brothers. And anyway, I needed some new clothes.”
For one long moment Emma McChesney stared, in silence. Then: “Of course,” she began, slowly, “I knew you were seventeen years old. I've even bragged about it. I've done more than that—I've gloried in it. But somehow, whenever I thought of you in my heart—and that was a great deal of the time it was as though you still were a little tyke in knee-pants, with your cap on the back of your head, and a chunk of apple bulging your cheek. Jock, I've been earning close to six thousand a year since I put in that side line of garters. Just how much spending money have I been providing you with?”
Jock twirled a coat button uncomfortably “Well, quite a lot. But a fellow's got to have money to keep up appearances. A lot of the fellows in my crowd have more than I. There are clothes, and tobacco, and then flowers and cabs for the skirts—girls, I mean, and—”
“Kid,” impressively, “I want you to sit down over there in that plush chair—the red one, with the lumps in the back. I want you to be uncomfortable. From where I am sitting I can see that in you there is the making of a first-class cad. That's no pleasant thing for a mother to realize. Now don't interrupt me. I'm going to be chairman, speaker, program, and ways-and-means committee of this meeting. Jock, I got my divorce from your father ten years ago. Now, I'm not going to say anything about him. Just this one thing. You're not going to follow in his footsteps, Kid. Not if I have to take you to pieces like a nickel watch and put you all together again. You're Emma McChesney's son, and ten years from now I intend to be able to brag about it, or I'll want to know the reason why—and it'll have to be a blamed good reason.”
“I'd like to know what I've done!” blurted the boy. “Just because I happened to come here a few hours before you expected me, and just because you saw me talking to a girl! Why—”