But really the vain woman wanted her son’s approval and admiration. She went upstairs to the room Gilbert had occupied in his bachelor days, and knocked at the door.
“It’s I, Bertie!”
“Come in, Mammy!” he called, cheerfully, and as soon as she had entered, he cried:
“Oh, I say! Queen of them all! You are lovely! You’ll be a riot!”
She smiled happily.
“You silly boy! Is it really a nice dress?”
“I wish you were going to sit up there on the platform and play. I’d rather hear you, and look at you, Mammy!”
“It might have been I,” she thought to herself, with a shade of bitterness. “I might have been a mother really to be proud of—a musician—a somebody.”
But she smiled again, and glanced at herself in the mirror. It was the most shockingly expensive dress she had ever had, a real Paris frock of satin in an exquisite shade of green that became her perfectly, and set off her coppery hair and pale skin to their best advantage. She was proud of her small waist, her little feet, in spite of the fact that they were old-fashioned, she was pleased with her miniature neatness and delicacy.
She turned to her son. Gilbert had angrily insisted that a boy of eighteen had no business in evening dress; a dinner jacket was the thing for him. But Bertie had pointed out the fact that the thing had already been ordered and fitted, and would have to be paid for.