"Got to hand it to my little mother for quiet and sumptuous el-e-gance! Some classy spangy-wangles!" He ran his hand against the lay of the sequins, absorbed in a conscious kind of gaiety.
She moistened her lips, trying to smile.
"Oh, boy," she said—"Edwin!"—holding to his forearm with fingers that tightened into it.
"Mother," he said, pulling at his coat lapels with a squaring of shoulders, "you—you going to be a dead game little sport?"
She was looking ahead now, abstraction growing in her white face.
"Huh?"
He fell into short strides up and down the length of the couch front.
"I—I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, but—but—oh, hang!—when a fellow's a senior it—it's all he can do to get home once in a while and—and—what's the use talking about a thing anyway before it breaks right, and—well, everybody knows it's up to us college fellows—college men—to lead the others and show our country what we're made of now that she needs us—eh, little dressed-up mother?"
She looked up at him with the tremulous smile still trying to break through.
"My boy can mix with the best of 'em."