around expressly to take his mother out to luncheon--always a
festive occasion when taken together. But Mrs. McChesney, seated
at her desk, was bent absorbedly over a sheet of paper whereon she
was adding up two columns of figures at a time--a trick on which
she rather prided herself. She was counting aloud, her mind
leaping agilely, thus:

"Eleven, twenty-nine, forty-three, sixty, sixty-nine--" Her pencil
came down on the desk with a thwack. "SIXTY-NINE!" she repeated in
capital letters. She turned around to face Jock. "Sixty-nine!" Her
voice bristled with indignation. "Now what do you think of that!"

"I think you'd better make it an even seventy, whatever it is
you're counting up, and come on out to luncheon. I've an
appointment at two-fifteen, you know."

"Luncheon!"--she waved the paper in the air--"with this outrage on
my mind! Nectar would curdle in my system."

Jock rose and strolled lazily over to the desk. "What is it?" He
glanced idly at the sheet of paper. "Sixty-nine what?"

Mrs. McChesney pressed a buzzer at the side of her desk.
"Sixty-nine dollars, that's what! Representing two days' expenses
in the six weeks' missionary trip that Fat Ed Meyers just made for
us. And in Iowa, too."

"When you gave that fellow the job," began Jock hotly, "I told
you, and Buck told you, that--"