The handwriting was Garry’s.

“For the love of Mike!” said Kenny, staring.

“Please read it,” said Joan.  “It makes everything so simple.”

Kenny obeyed.

“Dear Miss West: 

“It was like Brian to write so splendidly of his father in an effort to guarantee his own respectability as a suitable friend for your truant brother and fix his identity for the sake of your peace of mind.  And I’m glad he told you to write to me.

“Though at this particular minute I would like best to thrash Kennicott O’Neill into work and sanity, I might just as well admit the fact that I’m merely in the chronic state of all men who love him and pass on cheerfully to a pleasant task.  All that Brian has said of his father is true.  As for Brian himself, he’s a lovable, hot-headed chap with a head and a heart and too much of both for his own peace of mind.  And he’s so darned level-headed and unaffected he needs a Boswell.  I hope I’ve made good.

“The O’Neills, in short, are a splendid pair of fellows with a rush of Irish to the head.  They give each other more admiration and affection when they’re apart and more trouble when they’re together than any two men I have ever known.  Personally I think they’re miserable apart and hopeless together.  However, I’m no judge.  Five minutes of concentration on their present problems fuddles my brain beyond the point of intelligent logic.

“I must warn you that O’Neill senior is roving Heaven-knows-where in search of your uncle’s farm.  Knowing him fairly well I am convinced that he’ll rove most of the way in a Pullman, though he distinctly said not.  He hopes to find at your farm a letter from your brother that will furnish a clue.  Whereupon, I take it, he’ll rove forth again to seek his son and patch up a regular ballyhoo of a quarrel that almost disrupted the Holbein Club.  You see, everybody insisted upon taking both sides, with terrifying results.

“I pray Heaven that O’Neill senior may not find O’Neill junior, but from now on I shall have a nervous conviction of the pair of them quarreling all over the state of Pennsylvania.  In view of a certain sentimental indiscretion of mine in permitting O’Neill to read his son’s letter to me and find the postmark, I feel guilty and apprehensive.

“Your brother, I should say, is just a little safer with Brian than he would be anywhere else in the confines of the universe.

“I enclose a newspaper article on Kennicott O’Neill, written just after he had acquired one of the medals that fly up at him wherever he goes.  It’s fairly accurate.

“Sincerely,

“Garry Rittenhouse.”

With the girl’s soft eyes upon him, Kenny felt that he could not be expected to read each word of the letter.  He never did that anyhow.  He blurred through now with amazing speed, catching enough to gratify and upset him.  The letter, reminiscent of his penitential quest for Brian, roused voices that he did not want to hear.  Nor did he hear them for long.  Joan was holding out the clipping, her slender arm in its fall of yellowed lace a thing to catch the eye of any Irishman whom Fate for the good of the world of art had made a painter.