"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."

So it was that long after Annie's dinner dishes had ceased to
clatter in the kitchen; long after she had put her head in at the
door to ask, "Aigs 'r cakes for breakfast?" long after those two
busy brains should have rested in sleep, the two sat at either
side of the light-flooded table, the face of one glowing as he
talked, the face of the other sparkling as she listened. And at
midnight:

"Why, you infant wonder!" exclaimed Emma McChesney.

At nine o'clock next morning when Jock McChesney entered the
offices of the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company he carried a
flat, compact bundle of papers under his arm encased in protecting
covers of pasteboard, and further secured by bands of elastic.
This he carried to his desk, deposited in a drawer, and locked the
drawer.

By eleven o'clock the things which he had predicted the night
before had come to pass. A plump little man, with a fussy manner
and Western clothes had been ushered into Bartholomew Berg's