" said Kenny.

"You lie!" said Adam. "It's your way of telling me to mind my own
business."

Kenny did not trouble to deny it.

"You've been sulking."

"Very well, then," said Kenny evenly, making use of his one weapon of
composure, "let's concede that I've been sulking."

He was sorry instantly.

Infuriated, Adam brought his fist down upon the arm of his wheel-chair
and, coughing, propelled himself up and down the room.

Kenny walked away to the window, sick with remorse. For the old man
had coughed himself into gasping quiet. What could he do?

A wayward Irish tune, ludicrously fitting, danced into his head and
made him smile.

"What shall I do with this silly old man?" whistled Kenny softly at the
window.

"What's that?" demanded Adam suspiciously.

The insolence in his voice struck fire again. Kenny remembered his
notebook and the hour of accounting. Never again would the forces Adam
had revived sink into the quietude of his first days here at the farm.

"What's what?" he asked perversely.

"That asinine tune you're whistling?"

"It's a song," said Kenny innocently, "about a wild flower. And it was
very wild. It had thorns."

"I think you lie," said Adam, glaring. "But as I have no womanish
repertoire of songs to prove it, you can whistle it all you want and be
damned to you."

Kenny at the window availed himself of the privilege.

"What's the name of it?" snapped Adam after a while, ruffled by his
guest's persistence.

"'What shall I do with this silly old man?'" explained Kenny with a
grin.

"You impudent liar!" cried the old man in a high, angry voice. "Do you
ever tell the truth?"

"Almost never," said Kenny. "Do you?" And he went on with his
whistling.

Adam ignored his impudence.

"Well, then," he said, "it's time you began. You're young enough, God
knows. But it's not a youth of years. It's a superficial youth of
spirit. And you're old enough to tell the truth."

"How shall I learn?"

"Practice!"

Kenny wheeled. Adam's careless dart had struck deep and sharp and it
rankled.

"Very well, Adam," he said, "I'll practice on you."

Truth! Truth! he reflected passionately at the window. Was the world
mad about it? And what was the matter with himself? Why did the
romantic freaks of his fancy always fill him now with vague worry?

"What," gasped Adam, staring, "did you say?"

"I said," flung out Kenny, "that I'd practice telling the truth and I'd
practice