"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.
"I'll be damned if I go!" he bristled. "I'm too busy."
Garry looked directly at him and compelled a slight faltering of his gaze.
"It's the one day I've felt like work," blustered Kenny, squaring off his canvas. "You spoke of work, didn't you? And a fool of an English squire who ate goose? Let the idle rich sit around in squads and swear they don't read the newspapers. I do. Me on a jury! My dear Garry! I can't even sit still in my own studio. You know that yourself."
Nevertheless after a heated argument he went wearily with Garry in a taxi, particularly individualistic in his attire. And he told the judge in a richer brogue than usual that he was a painter subject to irresistible fits of dreaminess and must be excused. Garry, aghast, stared at the judge and the judge, with peculiar interest stared at the delinquent and excused him.
"Fortunately," Garry told him later, "your civic duties haven't spoiled your day."
Kenny merely glanced at him with a gentle air of patience. He would like to remind Garry that he had wanted to work and, thanks to Brian, the law had intervened. Now the coffee would be cold and he hated the sight of cold coffee. It depressed him.
Things thickened alarmingly. At three that afternoon, when he answered a violent thump upon the wall, Garry found the Louis XV table in a cloud of smoke; it was littered with vouchers and check books. Kenny, with his teeth set and one hand clenched in his hair, was figuring with the speed of an expert without, Garry felt sure, an expert's results. Brian, Kenny said aggrievedly, had always kept his check book straight.
"Look!" he flung out, indicating a problematical balance. "Look at that! And the fool says I'm overdrawn."
"Some clod of a mathematician," explained Kenny with contempt, "whom the bank employs to insult its patrons. Look here, Garry! Look at that balance. Over a thousand dollars. Do you wonder I told him he had a sense of humor when he said I was overdrawn? The young popinjay! Arguing with me about my own balance!"