Part of the collection
Complete Works Volume 1.
THE STORY: Living at home with his widowed, domineering mother, Albert is a meek, hen-pecked fellow for whom the invitation to an office party is a rare and welcome chance for a bit of fun. With his mother's exhortations to behave himself ringing in his ears (and his dinner in the oven lest he lose his nerve and turn back home), Albert meets his friends and goes off to the party. Once there, he struggles to overcome his shyness and join in the small talk, but when he is falsely accused of pinching a girl the resulting furor is more than he can cope with. Slinking home he is confronted with maternal diatribe which is, for poor Albert, the last straw. In a rage he rushes back into the London night and, picking up a girl at a coffee stand, goes with her to her room. But when they are alone the girl rambles on incessantly about what a lady she really is and Albert, perhaps sensing in her the personification of all the prattling women in the world, turns on her vindictively and annihilates her seamy and pathetic pretensions. Then he goes home again but when he does so there is a difference in him, a difference sensed by his mother—who now fears where once she was feared.
