Kenny sighed—and told the truth. Garry listened in amazement.
"Kenny," he said slowly, "you've roamed off before and gotten yourself into some extraordinary messes and I honestly thought that summer in China had taught you a lesson. But this tale of Adam Craig and the miser money is the king-pin of them all. You've absolutely got to house-clean that instinct for melodrama out of existence. It's a peril; and furthermore expensive."
"Don't rub it in," said Kenny. "Whatever you can think to say, I've already told myself. Though," he added pensively, "it's queer, Garry. Wherever I go, things begin to thicken up before I've had a chance to be at fault in any way. And I'm so darned sick of anticlimaxes."
"You keep yourself keyed up to such a pitch that anything normal's got to be an anticlimax! Think of you digging dots when you knew there wasn't any money! Think of you with a ward! Oh, my Lord!" finished Garry with a gasp. "It's incredible. It—it really is."
Kenny flushed and gnawed nervously at his lips. Could he tell Garry of Samhain?
"And think of you," said Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish lunatic! I love you for it!"
Kenny rose at once and began to bluster around the studio, damning Haggerty. There was something disturbingly warm and honest in Garry's eyes. Then with a sudden gesture of impatience he came back and his troubled glance begged for understanding.
"Garry," he blurted, "there's one thing that probably we shan't be telling people for a year at least. And that is—that I love this girl better than my life and I'm going to marry her."
He waited with a fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung it in passionate relief.
"What's my balance?" he demanded.