A certain cold rigidity settled over Emma McChesney's face. She eyed
her son in silence until his miserable eyes, perforce, looked up into
hers.

"I'm afraid you'll have to break your engagement," she said.

She turned to face Mary Cutting's regretful, understanding gaze. Her
eyebrows lifted slightly. Her head inclined ever so little in the
direction of the half-scared, half-defiant "chicken."

"You attend to your chicken, Mary," she said. "I'll see to my weasel."

So Emma McChesney and her son Jock, looking remarkably like brother
and sister, walked down the broad store aisles and out into the
street. There was little conversation between them. When the pillared
entrance of the hotel came into sight Jock broke the silence,
sullenly:

"Why do you stop at that old barracks? It's a rotten place for a
woman. No one stops there but clothing salesmen and boobs who still
think it's Chicago's leading hotel. No place for a lady."

"Any place in the world is the place for a lady, Jock," said Emma
McChesney quietly.

Automatically she started toward the clerk's desk. Then she
remembered, and stopped. "I'll wait here," she said. "Get the key for
five-eighteen, will you please? And tell the clerk that I'll want the
room adjoining beginning to-night, instead of to-morrow, as I first
intended. Tell him you're Mrs. McChesney's son."