cking _me_ for a target? As far as I can see
I'm merely maintaining my usual average of imperfection and all the
rest of the world has gone mad."

"I suppose, Kenny," began Garry lamely, "you must be starting a new
cycle. Jan could tell you. He talks a lot about the cycle of dates
and the philosophy of vibrations--"

"I know that I regard the truth as something sacred, to be handled with
delicacy and discretion," began Kenny with bitter fluency. "I'm an
unsuccessful parent with an over-supply of hair and teeth, afflicted
with hairbrained, unquenchable youth. I'd be a perennial in the Land
of the Young and could hobnob indefinitely with his Flighty Highness,
the King of Youth. I'm forty-four years young and highly
temperamentalized. I've made a mess of parenting Brian and I'm an
abject failure."

Garry looked at him.

"Just what are you talking about?" he asked.

"I know," pursued Kenny elaborately, "that it's unfortunate I haven't
wrecked my own life when I'm an accidental success at wrecking Brian's.
I'm full of cobwebs. I damn irrefutable things and I've forced Brian
to a profession of sunsets to gratify my vanity. Can you personally,
Garry, think of anything else?"

"Sit down!" said Garry. "You're about as logical as a lunatic--"

"Tell Whitaker, do," begged Kenny. "There's one he missed. Garry,
what's back of all this turmoil? What's the real reason for Brian's
brain-storm? I'm sick to death of Whitaker's wordy arabesque and
abuse. I want facts."

"Brian said it all last night," reminded Garry. "It's just another
case of a last straw."

"You honestly mean that the ancestors of the straw are the sunsets, the
disorder here--the--the--" He thumped the table. "Garry, I don't
lie. I swear I don't. I hate a liar. I mean a dishonorable liar. A
lie is an untruth that harms. That's my definition. Any man
embroiders sordid fact on occasion."

"On occasion!" admitted Garry.

Kenny, with his eye upon the fern in the window, missed the
significance. It had registered his sincere regret--that fern--at the
need of pawning Brian's fishing rods and golf clubs. Like Brian! He
had failed utterly to comprehend the delicacy of the tribute.

Finding this point upon which he dwelt with some length equally
over-nice for Garry's perception, Kenny in a huff sent him home,
watered the fern, without in the least understanding the impulse, and
went to bed. And dreaming as usual, he seemed to be hunti