The girl had smiled, dreamily, and gazed out of the car window. "I
wonder," she said, "if there'll be a letter from George. He said he
would sit right down and write."

In the safe seclusion of her high-backed chair Emma McChesney smiled
approvingly. Seventeen years ago, when her son had been born, and ten
years ago, when she had got her divorce, Emma McChesney had thanked
her God that her boy had not been a girl. Sometimes, now, she was not
so sure about it. It must be fascinating work--selecting velvet suits,
made "fussy," for a daughter's trousseau.

Just how fully those five months of small-town existence had got on
her nerves Emma McChesney did not realize until the train snorted into
the shed and she sniffed the mingled smell of smoke and stockyards and
found it sweet in her nostrils. An unholy joy seized her. She entered
the Biggest Store and made for the millinery department, yielding to
an uncontrollable desire to buy a hat. It was a pert, trim, smart
little hat. It made her thirty-six years seem less possible than ever,
and her seventeen-year-old son an absurdity.

It was four-thirty when she took the elevator up to Mary Cutting's
office on the tenth floor. She knew she would find Mary Cutting there
--Mary Cutting, friend, counselor, adviser to every young girl in the
great store and to all Chicago's silly, helpless "chickens."

A dragon sat before Mary Cutting's door and wrote names on slips. But
at sight of Emma McChesney she laid down her pencil.

"Well," smiled the dragon, "you're a sight for sore eyes. There's
nobody in there with her. Just walk in and surprise her."