Jock McChesney was seated in the window of his mother's office at
noon of a brilliant autumn day. A little impatient frown was
forming between his eyes. He wanted his luncheon. He had called
around expressly to take his mother out to luncheon--always a
festive occasion when taken together. But Mrs. McChesney, seated
at her desk, was bent absorbedly over a sheet of paper whereon she
was adding up two columns of figures at a time--a trick on which
she rather prided herself. She was counting aloud, her mind
leaping agilely, thus:

"Eleven, twenty-nine, forty-three, sixty, sixty-nine--" Her pencil
came down on the desk with a thwack. "SIXTY-NINE!" she repeated in
capital letters. She turned around to face Jock. "Sixty-nine!" Her
voice bristled with indignation. "Now what do you think of that!"

"I think you'd better make it an even seventy, whatever it is
you're counting up, and come on out to luncheon. I've an
appointment at two-fifteen, you know."

"Luncheon!"--she waved the paper in the air--"with this outrage on
my mind! Nectar would curdle in my system."

Jock rose and strolled lazily over to the desk. "What is it?" He
glanced idly at the sheet of paper. "Sixty-nine what?"

Mrs. McChesney pressed a buzzer at the side of her desk.
"Sixty-nine dollars, that's what! Representing two days' expenses
in the six weeks' missionary trip that Fat Ed Meyers just made for
us. And in Iowa, too."

"When you gave that fellow the job," began Jock hotly, "I told
you, and Buck told you, that--"

Mrs. McChesney interrupted wearily. "Yes, I know. You'll never
have a grander chance to say 'I told you so.' I hired him
because he was out of a job and we needed a man who knew the
Middle-Western trade, and then because--well, poor fellow, he
begged so and promised to keep straight. As though I oughtn't to
know that a pinochle-and-poker traveling man can never be anything
but a pinochle-and-poker traveling man--"

The office door opened as there appeared in answer to the buzzer a
very alert, very smiling, and very tidy office girl. Emma
McChesney had tried office boys, and found them wanting.

"Tell Mr. Meyers I want to see him."

"Just going out to lunch,"--she turned like a race horse trembling
to be off,--"putting on his overcoat in the front office. Shall
I--"

"Catch him."

"Listen here," began Jock uncomfortably; "if you're going to call
him perhaps I'd better vanish."

"To save Ed Meyers's tender feelings! You don'