“That’s the funniest part of it!  That you, of all people, shouldn’t see the joke.  Not exactly bad!” He wiped his eyes.  “Why, do you mean to tell me that because your young cub of a son, by a heaven-sent stroke of good fortune, has landed a job that men twice his age would give their eyeteeth to get, I find you sitting at the telephone looking as if he had run off with Annie the cook, or had had a leg cut off!”

“I suppose it is funny.  Only, the joke’s on me.  That’s why I can’t see it.  It means that I’m losing him.”

“That’s the first selfish word I’ve ever heard you utter.”

“Oh, don’t think I’m not happy at his success.  Happy!  Haven’t I hoped for it, and worked for it, and prayed for it!  Haven’t I saved for it, and skimped for it!  How do you think I could have stood those years on the road if I hadn’t kept up courage with the thought that it was all for him?  Don’t I know how narrowly Jock escaped being the wrong kind!  I’m his mother, but I’m not quite blind.  I know he had the making of a first-class cad.  I’ve seen him start off in the wrong direction a hundred times.”

“If he has turned out a success, it’s because you’ve steered him right.  I’ve watched you make him over.  And now, when his big chance has come, you—­”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” interrupted Emma McChesney a little wearily.  “I know it sounds crazy and unreasonable.  There’s only one sort of human being who could understand what I mean.  That’s a woman with a son.”  She laughed a little shamefacedly.  “I’m talking like the chorus of a minor-wail sob song, but it’s the truth.”

“If you feel like that, Emma, tell him to stay.  The boy wouldn’t go if he thought it would make you unhappy.”

“Not go!” cried Emma McChesney sharply.  “I’d like to see him dare to refuse it!”

“Well then, what in—­” began Buck, bewildered.

“Don’t try to understand it, T.A.  It’s no use.  Don’t try to poke your finger into the whirligig they call ‘Woman’s Sphere.’  Its mechanism is too complicated.  It’s the same quirk that makes women pray for daughters and men for sons.  It’s the same kink that makes women read the marriage and death notices first in a newspaper.  It’s the same queer strain that causes a mother to lavish the most love on the weakest, wilfullest child.  Perhaps I wouldn’t have loved Jock so much if there hadn’t been that streak of yellow in him, and if I hadn’t had to work so hard to dilute it until now it’s only a faint cream color.  There ought to be a special prayer for women who are bringing up their sons alone.”

Buck stirred a little uneasily.  “I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”

“You probably never will again.”  She swung round to her desk.

T.A.  Buck, strolling toward the door, still wore the puzzled look.

“I don’t know what makes you take this so seriously.  Of course, the boy will be a long way off.  But then, you’ve been separated from him before.  What’s the difference now?”