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Page 1
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Joan . . . . . . Frontispiece
He was sailing across, to romance he hoped, and surely to mystery
"'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids"
"I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I may--may never--say
it again"
KENNY
CHAPTER I
BRIAN REBELS
"You needn't repeat it," said Brian with a flash of his quiet eyes.
"This time, Kenny, I mean to stay disinherited."
Kennicott O'Neill stared at his son and gasped. The note of permanency
in the chronic rite of disinheritance was startling. So was something
in the set of Brian's chin and the flush of anger burning steadily
beneath the dark of his skin. Moreover, his eyes, warmly Irish like
his father's, and ordinarily humorous and kind, remained unflinchingly
aggressive.
With the air of an outraged emperor, the older man strode across the
studio and rapped upon his neighbor's wall for arbitration.
"Garry may be in bed," said Brian,
"And he may not." It was much the same to Kenny.
He was a splendid figure--that Irishman. His gorgeous Persian slippers
curled at the toes and ended in a pair of scarlet heels. The
extraordinary mandarin combination of oriental magnificence and the
rags he affected for a bathrobe, hung from a pair of shoulders
noticeably broad and graceful. If he wore his frayed splendor with a
certain picturesque distinction, it was the way he did all things, even
his delightful brogue which was if anything a shade too mellifluous to
be wholly unaffected. What Kenny liked he kept if he could, even his
irresponsible youth and gayety.
Time had helped him there. His auburn hair was still bright and thick.
And his eyes were as blue and merry now as when with pagan reverence he
had tramped and sketched as a lad among the ruined altars of the druids.
He had meant to wither his son with continued dignity and calm. The
vagaries of Irish temper ordained otherwise. Kenny glanced at the
fragments of a statuette conspicuously rearranged on a Louis XV table
almost submerged in the chaotic disorder of the studio, and lost his
head.
"Look at that!" he flung out furiously.
Brian had already looked--with guilt--and regretted.
"I broke it--accidentally," he admitted.
"Accidentally! You flung a brush at it."
"I flung a brush across the studio," corrected Brian, "just after you
went out to pawn my shotgun."
"Damn the shotgun!"
"I can extend that same courtesy," reminded Brian, "to the statuette."
Things were going badly when the expected arbitrator rapped upon the
door, and losing ground, Kenny felt that he must needs dramatize his
parental right to authority for the benefit of Garry's ears and his own
pride.
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