when I'm here and you try to be nice to her to show off. Elmer, who is this secretary of yours that you keep calling up all the while?"
The Reverend Dr. Gantry rose quietly, and sonorously he spoke:
"My dear mater, I owe you everything. But at a time when one of the greatest Methodist churches in the world and one of the greatest reform organizations in the world are begging for my presence, I don't know that I need to explain even to you, Ma, what I'm trying to do. I'm going up to my room—"
"Yes, and that's another thing, having separate rooms—"
"—and pray that you may understand. . . . Say, listen, Ma! Some day you may come to the White House and lunch with me and the president! . . . But I mean: Oh, Ma, for God's sake, quit picking on me like Cleo does all the while!"
And he did pray; by his bed he knelt, his forehead gratefully cool against the linen spread, mumbling, "O dear God, I am trying to serve thee. Keep Ma from feeling I'm not doing right—"
He sprang up.
"Hell!" he said. "These women want me to be a house dog! To hell with 'em! No! Not with mother, but— Oh, damn it, she'll understand when I'm the pastor of Yorkville! O God, why can't Cleo die, so I can marry Hettie!"
Two minutes later he was murmuring to Hettie Dowler, from the telephone instrument in the pantry, while the cook was grumbling and picking over the potatoes down in the basement, "Dear, will you just say something nice to me—anything—anything!"
