rust her feet in slippers, groped for the kimono at the foot of
the bed and tiptoed to the door. She listened. No sound from the
other room. She stole across the hall, stopped, listened, gained
the door. It was open an inch or more. Just to be near him, to
know that he lay there, sleeping! She pushed the door very, very
gently. Then she stood in the doorway a moment, scarcely
breathing, her head thrust forward, her whole body tense with
listening. She could not hear him breathe! She caught her breath
again in that unreasoning fear and took a quick step forward.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" said a voice. Simultaneously the light
flashed on. Emma McChesney found herself blinking at a determined
young man who was steadily pointing a short, chubby, businesslike
looking steel affair in her direction. Then the hand that held the
steel dropped.

"What is this, anyway?" demanded Jock rather crossly. "A George
Cohan comedy?"

Emma McChesney leaned against the foot of the bed rather weakly.

"What did you think--"

"What would you think if you heard some one come sneaking along
the hall, stopping, listening, sneaking to your door, and then
opening it, and listening again, and sneaking in? What would you
think it was? How did I know you were going around making social
calls at two o'clock in the morning!"

Suddenly Emma McChesney began to laugh. She leaned over the
footboard and laughed hysterically, her head in her arms. Jock
stared a moment in offended disapproval. Then the humor of it
caught him, and he buried his head in his pillow to stifle
unseemly shrieks. His legs kicked spasmodically beneath the
bedclothes.

As suddenly as she had begun to laugh Mrs. McChesney became very
sober.

"Stop it, Jock! Tell me, why weren't you sleeping?"

"I don't know," replied Jock, as suddenly solemn. "I--sort
of--began to think, and I couldn't sleep."

"What were you thinking of?"

Jock looked down at the bedclothes and traced a pattern with one
forefinger on the sheet. Then he looked up.

"Thinking of you."

"Oh!" said Emma McChesney, like a bashful schoolgirl. "Of--me!"

Jock sat up very straight and clasped his hands about his knees.
"I got to thinking of what I had said about having made good all
alone. That's rot. It isn't so. I was striped with yellow like a
stick of lemon candy. If I've got this far, it's all because of
you. I've been thinking all along that I was the original electric
self-starter, when you've really h