. He met those
two eyes opposite.

"Spooks? Or is it my godlike beauty which holds you thus? Or is my
face dirty?"

Emma McChesney did not smile. She laid her magazine on the table,
face down, and leaned forward, her staring eyes still fixed on her
son's face.

"Look here, young 'un. Are you working too hard?"

"Me? Now? This stuff you mean--?"

"No; I mean in the last year. Are they piling it up on you?"

Jock laughed a laugh that was nothing less than a failure, so
little of real mirth did it contain.

"Piling it up! Lord, no! I wish they would. That's the trouble.
They don't give me a chance."

"A chance! Why, that's not true, son. You've said yourself that
there are men who have been in the office three times as long as
you have, who never have had the opportunities that they've given
you."

It was as though she had touched a current that thrilled him to
action. He pushed back his chair and stood up, one hand thrust
into his pocket, the other passing quickly over his head from brow
to nape with a quick, nervous gesture that was new to him.

"And why!" he flung out. "Why! Not because they like the way I
part my hair. They don't do business that way up there. It's
because I've made good, and those other dubs haven't. That's why.
They've let me sit in at the game. But they won't let me take any
tricks. I've been an apprentice hand for two years now. I'm tired
of it. I want to be in on a killing. I want to taste blood. I want
a chance at some of the money--real money."

Emma McChesney sat back in her chair and surveyed the angry figure
before her with quiet, steady eyes.

"I might have known that only one thing could bring those lines
into your face, son." She paused a moment. "So you want money as
badly as all that, do you?"

Jock's hand came down with a thwack on the papers before him.

"Want it! You just bet I want it."

"Do I know her?" asked Emma McChesney quietly.

Jock stopped short in his excited pacing up and down the room.

"Do you know--Why, I didn't say there--What makes you think
that--?"

"When a youngster like you, whose greatest worry has been whether
Harvard'll hold 'em again this year, with Baxter out, begins to
howl about not being appreciated in business, and to wear a late
fall line of wrinkles where he has been smooth before, I feel
justified in saying, 'Do I know her?'"

"Well, it isn't any one--at least, it isn't what you mean you
think it is when you say you--"

"Ca