grand old gal, but she’s one of these eight-day, self-winding, Do-Gooders—you know! Always cleaning up a slum or starting a movement or something, and I guess Peter’s just[123] naturally so sick of it he goes the limit the other way. (No, now—you can wait a minute!) You can’t high-hat me out of telling my bun mut! Well, it was in one of the colleges where they hadn’t canned him yet, and the Y.M.C.A. lads were giving a dinner to their mothers, and, of course, Mrs. Parker would be the noblest Roman of them all, and they were nuts to have her, only she was clear across the map, uplifting something, and telegraphed her regrets. Well, then they figured that the next best would be to get her son, and have him respond to the toast—‘Our Mothers!’” [123] Her listener showed signs of extreme restiveness and Miss Jennings laid firm hands upon her. “Well, in a weak moment he allows he’ll do it, and then, on the big night, forgets all about it. There they are, all set, and r’aring to go, and no Peter Parker. So they start a still hunt all over the landscape, including some choice spots where those good little Y.M.C.A. had never been before, and finally they run him down, only slightly the worse for wear, and get him into his uni, and deliver him at the speaker’s table. Well, by that time Peter is just about as near sore as Peter ever could be, because he was just slipping into high for a really good night, and this whole thing leaves him cold, and he figures that it’s all the mama’s fault for being such a front-page special, so when the poor old toast[124] master sees him there at last, clothed and in his right mind, he makes a long and fancy introduction, saying it with flowers and gobs of goo, and tells what pleasure he has and what an honor it is to introduce Mr. Peter Parker, the son of Mrs. Eugenia Parker, the blah to whose blah-blah we owe the blah-blah-BLAH—‘Ladies and Gentlemen—Mr. Peter Parker!’ [124] “Well, of course there’s a big hand, and Peter Piper rises wearily, and waits till the noise dies away, and then he lifts his glass of lukewarm lemonade and looks at it more in sorrow than in anger, and up on the balls of his feet, like young Mr. Mercury, all set for a get-a-way, and sighs a little, and says—‘Here’s to the mothers who bore us ... and still do!’” [125] CHAPTER XI Glen sets the day for her twentieth birthday, and grieves because her suitor is too busy to help her better conditions, while Mr. ’Gene Carey is crushed by the perfidy
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