Emma McChesney came over from her side of the table and stood very close to her son.  She laid one hand very lightly on his arm and looked up into the sullen, angry young face.

  [Illustration:  “She laid one hand very lightly on his arm and
  looked up into the sullen, angry young face”]

“I’ve seen older men than you are, Jock, and better men, and bigger men, wearing that same look, and for the same reason.  Every ambitious man or woman in business wears it at one time or another.  Sooner or later, Jock, you’ll have your chance at the money end of this game.  If you don’t care about the thing you call ethics, it’ll be sooner.  If you do care, it will be later.  It rests with you, but it’s bound to come, because you’ve got the stuff in you.”

“Maybe,” replied Jock the cynical.  But his face lost some of its sullenness as he looked down at that earnest, vivid countenance up-turned to his.  “Maybe.  It sounds all right, Mother—­in the story books.  But I’m not quite solid on it.  These days it isn’t so much what you’ve got in you that counts as what you can bring out.  I know the young man’s slogan used to be ‘Work and Wait,’ or something pretty like that.  But these days they’ve boiled it down to one word—­’Produce’!”

“The marvel of it is that there aren’t more of ’em,” observed Emma McChesney sadly.

“More what?”

“More lines.  Here,”—­she touched his forehead,—­“and here,”—­she touched his eyes.

“Lines!” Jock swung to face a mirror.  “Good!  I’m so infernally young-looking that no one takes me seriously.  It’s darned hard trying to convince people you’re a captain of finance when you look like an errand boy.”

From the center of the room Mrs. McChesney watched the boy as he surveyed himself in the glass.  And as she gazed there came a frightened look into her eyes.  It was gone in a minute, and in its place came a curious little gleam, half amused, half pugnacious.

“Jock McChesney, if I thought that you meant half of what you’ve said to-night about honor, and ethics, and all that, I’d—­”

“Spank me, I suppose,” said the young six-footer.

“No,” and all the humor had fled, “I—­Jock, I’ve never said much to you about your father.  But I think you know that he was what he was to the day of his death.  You were just about eight when I made up my mind that life with him was impossible.  I said then—­and you were all I had, son—­that I’d rather see you dead than to have you turn out to be a son of your father.  Don’t make me remember that wish, Jock.”

Two quick steps and his arms were about her.  His face was all contrition.  “Why—­Mother!  I didn’t mean—­You see this is business, and I’m crazy to make good, and it’s such a fight—­”

“Don’t I know it?” demanded Emma McChesney.  “I guess your mother hasn’t been sitting home embroidering lunchcloths these last fifteen years.”  She lifted her head from the boy’s shoulder.  “And now, son, considering me, not as your doting mother, but in my business capacity as secretary of the T.A.  Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, suppose you reveal to me the inner workings of this plan of yours.  I’d like to know if you really are the advertising wizard that you think you are.”