Mrs. Eugenia Parker got to her feet and walked to the end of the sleeping porch and stood for several moments looking out into the effective garden which surrounded her house. When she came back to her son her voice was low and steady.
“Will you try to realize what this means to me, personally, Peter? In the first place, because you are my son, and in the second place because, publicly, I stand for proper working and living conditions, compulsory education—law enforcement—and privately, I or at least a member of my family—Peter, we are the accessories after the fact! We are guilty, you and I, of breaking laws, not only the laws of the country, but the laws of common humanity. Peter, are you listening to me? You are not going to sleep again?”
“Not if I can possibly help it, Eugenia,” he assured her warmly, “but there’s something so soothing about your voice....”
She rose again and stood frowning down on him. “Peter, I ask you once more, will—you—read—this article?”
“I’ll compromise with you, Eugenia! You read it, and I’ll listen!” He propped himself up on an elbow. “It’s a long time since you’ve read aloud to me, isn’t it, Eugenia? Remember how I used to want the ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ twice a year? And ‘Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas,’ and ‘Thro’ Swamp and Glade,’ and ‘The Prince and the Pauper’? You wouldn’t read Frank Merriwell to me—‘Blooey, blooey, and eight more redskins bit the dust!’—and I always rather held it against you,” he smiled at her cozily. “Now, you go right ahead and get this off your mind, Madame President! Shoot!”
Mrs. Parker sat down again, stiffly, on the edge of her chair. “Peter, will you never grow up?”
“Certainly. I did. I am. There are those who consider me entirely mature. For example, the very determined young lady from Arizona who endeavored to espouse me at Del Monte last month, and the——”
“Peter, please!” The consuming terror of her life was that her only son would make a thoroughly unsuitable marriage and he was quite well aware of her anxiety on the subject.
“Well, what do you suppose it is, Eugenia? What is the secret of my fatal attraction? If I didn’t take Takasugi with me, there are times when I should be actually overpowered.... You wouldn’t say, would you,” he flung back the bright blue spread and sat up in his bright blue pajamas, his fair hair mussed, his arms about his knees, “that I am the caveman type, popularly supposed to be irresistible? It must be my girlish laughter. But to return—I have no objection, I never had, to growing up, a process which carries with it many pleasant prerogatives. But I will not—I will never, and it is useless for you to plead with me and importune me, Eugenia, grow old. Madame President, consider the bleakness of it!” He shivered and dove under his covers again. “Eugenia, I tell you frankly, I’m in a Peter Panic about growing old!”