he pines
with a book beneath his arm. Kenny glowered some at Mr. Abbott. An
eye for nothing there but duty and even that he saw in a stark and
unromantic way. And he lacked a sense of humor. He'd proved it in the
river. Joan answered his letters with an adorable primness that filled
him with delight. It reflected Mr. Abbott. But her letters ended
always with the naivete of a child. They all missed him.

It was pleasant to be missed.

The pleasure was curiously reactive. Kenny's irritability grew too
marked to be ignored. Jan and Sid and Garry met and talked him over.

"What's wrong with him?" demanded Sid, amazed. "Garry, what is it?
He's as quarrelsome as a magpie and nothing suits him. He barks at the
club-boys and if you drift into the studio you're about as welcome as
the measles."

"It's not because he's busy," said Garry grimly. "Nothing I've found
is further from his mind than the thought of work."

"And it's plain Brian isn't coming back," put in Jan. "He might as
well face that fact and have done with it. Personally I've lost
patience with him. He acts like a sulky kid."

Later Jan improvised a "scarlet fever" placard which Kenny in the
course of time found nailed upon his door. He read with amazed and
offended eyes that he was temporarily in temper quarantine.

It soon became apparent that life without Brian was maintaining even
more than its usual average of petty complication. The problem of
small change Kenny found a torment. There Brian had been a jewel. It
simply narrowed down to this, he told Garry: No matter how he started,
he never had any. Even a bag of change he had procured from the bank
in a moment of desperation was never to be found. It got under things.
His eventual solution of the difficulty plunged the club into scandal
and uproar. He found the bag of change and sprinkled coins into
everything in the studio that would hold them.

"Now," he informed Garry with moody satisfaction, "I'll always be able
to put my hand on some when I want it. I wonder I didn't think of it
before. I'm better with big sums. Dimes and nickels and even quarters
make me nervous. You know how it is, Garry. I always have to come in
to you or do one of a number of desperate things. And then if I can't
find a small coin and tip with a big one, Jan gets wind of it somehow
and talks by the hour about demoralizing the club-boys. He's a pest."

The device at first bade fair to be successf