As suddenly as she had begun to laugh Mrs. McChesney became very sober.

“Stop it, Jock!  Tell me, why weren’t you sleeping?”

“I don’t know,” replied Jock, as suddenly solemn.  “I—­sort of—­began to think, and I couldn’t sleep.”

“What were you thinking of?”

Jock looked down at the bedclothes and traced a pattern with one forefinger on the sheet.  Then he looked up.

“Thinking of you.”

“Oh!” said Emma McChesney, like a bashful schoolgirl.  “Of—­me!”

Jock sat up very straight and clasped his hands about his knees.  “I got to thinking of what I had said about having made good all alone.  That’s rot.  It isn’t so.  I was striped with yellow like a stick of lemon candy.  If I’ve got this far, it’s all because of you.  I’ve been thinking all along that I was the original electric self-starter, when you’ve really had to get out and crank me every few miles.”

Into Emma McChesney’s face there came a wonderful look.  It was the sort of look with which a newly-made angel might receive her crown and harp.  It was the look with which a war-hero sees the medal pinned on his breast.  It was the look of one who has come into her Reward.  Therefore: 

“What nonsense!” said Emma McChesney.  “If you hadn’t had it in you, it wouldn’t have come out.”

“It wasn’t in me, in the first place,” contested Jock stubbornly.  “You planted it.”

From her stand at the foot of the bed she looked at him, her eyes glowing brighter and brighter with that wonderful look.

“Now see here,”—­severely—­“I want you to go to sleep.  I don’t intend to stand here and dispute about your ethical innards at this hour.  I’m going to kiss you again.”

“Oh, well, if you must,” grinned Jock resignedly, and folded her in a bear-hug.

To Emma McChesney it seemed that the next three weeks leaped by, not by days, but in one great bound.  And the day came when a little, chattering, animated group clustered about the slim young chap who was fumbling with his tickets, glancing at his watch, signaling a porter for his bags, talking, laughing, trying to hide the pangs of departure under a cloak of gayety and badinage that deceived no one.  Least of all did it deceive the two women who stood there.  The eyes of the older woman never left his face.  The eyes of the younger one seldom were raised to his, but she saw his every expression.  Once Emma McChesney’s eyes shifted a little so as to include both the girl and the boy in her gaze.  Grace Galt in her blue serge and smart blue hat was worth a separate glance.

Sam Hupp was there, T.A.  Buck, Hopper, who was to be with him in Chicago for the first few weeks, three or four of the younger men in the office, frankly envious and heartily congratulatory.

They followed him to his train, all laughter and animation.

“If this train doesn’t go in two minutes,” said Jock, “I’ll get scared and chuck the whole business.  Funny, but I’m not so keen on going as I was three weeks ago.”