As for work, Kenny loved work, Brian and Garry to the contrary.  If in Brian’s absence everything conspired against his passionate love of industry, it was no fault of his.  Along with the torment of doubts that assailed him, thanks to that infernal notebook, the studio kept catapulting itself into a jungle of nerve-racking disorder in which it was impossible to work.  And when Mrs. Haggerty fell upon it with the horrible energy of the Philistine and found places for everything, the studio became a place in which no self-respecting painter could be expected to keep his inspiration or his temper.  Here again, Kenny felt aggrievedly, was a condition which Brian’s presence could have altered.  The lad had a way of mitigating order and disorder with a curious result of comfort.

Garry lost his patience.

“You remind me,” he said, “of the English squire who only drank ale on two occasions; when he had goose for dinner and when he didn’t.”

Kenny remarked that the squire by reason of his nativity was a fool.  And the thing couldn’t be helped.  The studio in order was impossible.  He added with an air of inspiration that it made him think of mathematics.  Mathematics he considered a final argument against anything.  Besides, he was unusually fallible.  Garry must always keep that in mind.  Let the infallibles work.  If there was only something he liked well enough, he’d drink himself to death.

“I suppose you are aware,” thundered Garry, thoroughly exasperated, “that even a painter must work to live?  The whole club’s buzzing over your tantrums.  There’s been some talk of chaining you to an easel with a brush in your hand for your own good.”

Kenny as usual consigned the club to Gehenna.  Nevertheless, as Garry saw, he winced.  Very well, he would work, furiously, as only he knew how to work and when he had scored another brilliant success—­

Fate intervened.  To his intense excitement Kenny was summoned for jury duty.  He managed after much difficulty to place the blame of this too at Brian’s door.  Brian, he remembered, had flirted with the daughter of an uptown judge.  Likely he had boasted about his father’s versatility.

Inevitably on the morning there was civic need of him at court, Kenny awoke with a fever for work, shocked at his record of indolence.  Garry found him in a painter’s smock, conspicuously busy with a yard-stick and crayon.  Everything in the studio on rollers had been rearranged.  A chafing dish of coffee, sufficient to stimulate him through a day of fearful labor, stood upon a table beside a supply of cigarettes.

“Now, Kenny,” said Garry, who was finding his responsibilities in Brian’s absence more or less complex, “you know hanged well you have that jury thing on this morning.  I’m going with you.”

Kenny filled a battered tin-cup with something he had to sniff for purposes of identity, unearthed a number of brushes and defiantly polished a palette with a wad of cheesecloth.