in the stuffy, over-crowded hotel room--the boy who was learning his
lesson.

Half an hour later she reentered the hotel, her cheeks glowing. Jock
was not yet down. So she ordered and ate her wise and cautious
breakfast of fruit and cereal and toast and coffee, skimming over her
morning paper as she ate. At 7:30 she was back in the lobby, newspaper
in hand. The Bisons were already astir. She seated herself in a deep
chair in a quiet corner, her eyes glancing up over the top of her
paper toward the stairway. At eight o'clock Jock McChesney came down.

There was nothing of jauntiness about him. His eyelids were red. His
face had the doughy look of one whose sleep has been brief and
feverish. As he came toward his mother you noticed a stain on his
coat, and a sunburst of wrinkles across one leg of his modish brown
trousers.

"Good-morning, son!" said Emma McChesney. "Was it as bad as that?"

Jock McChesney's long fingers curled into a fist.

"Say," he began, his tone venomous, "do you know what those--those--
those--"

"Say it!" commanded Emma McChesney. "I'm only your mother. If you keep
that in your system your breakfast will curdle in your stomach."

Jock McChesney said it. I know no phrase better fitted to describe his
tone than that old favorite of the erotic novelties. It was vibrant
with passion. It breathed bitterness. It sizzled with savagery. It--