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Page 118
"Kenny, Kenny, Kenny," she said, "will you ever grow up?"
"Did Peter Pan? Better get your cloak, dear. You may need it."
He went off whistling to the barn. Kenny had blessed the car and Garry
many times. He blessed them again as the engine throbbed in the dusk.
Hot silence lay upon the ridge, broken only by the noise of insects.
"A long road and a straight road and Samhain at the end!" he sang as
Joan climbed in. "And bless the Irish heart of me, dear, there's a
moon scrambling up behind the hill and peeping over. Lordy, Lordy!" he
added under his breath, "what a moon!"
"'On such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew
And with an unthrift love did run to Venice
As far as--'
"Hum! I've forgotten. Wonder why Shakespeare looked ahead and
harpooned me with that word unthrift. Where to, Jessica? Where shall
the unthrift lover drive on such a night?"
Joan stared absently at the road ahead.
"To Ireland," she said.
The answer pleased him.
"I mind me," he said instantly, "of an Irish tale of Finn McCoul."
Joan did not answer.
"Tell me," she said at last. "Finn and you are always delightful."
Kenny stared at her in marked reproach.
"Joan!" he exclaimed.
"What--what is it, Kenny?"
"That's just the sort of polite nothing you learned in New York!"
"I'm sorry, Kenny. I'm--tired. And just for a minute I wasn't
listening. You know how it is. You hear an echo in your mind a long
while after and answer in a panic." She brushed her cheek against his
sleeve with a remorseful gesture of appeal. His arm went round her.
"There!" he said with a sigh of relief. "That's better. I'm lonesome
when we're not in tune."
"And the story?"
Kenny told of a fairy face that Finn had seen in a lake among the
heather.
"Leaf-brown eyes had the nymph, I take it, and satin-cream skin with a
rose showin' through and allurin' lashes maybe dipped in the ink-pots
of the fairies."
"What," said Joan from the shelter of his arm, "is a blarney stone?"
"A substitute for lips!" said Kenny instantly and kissed her.
"And Finn?"
"Plunged into the waters of the lake, he did, as any son of Erin
would--and found the maid."
But Joan's eyes were absently fixed upon the road again and Kenny
abandoned his legend with a sigh until he bethought himself to use its
climax in reproach.
"And when Finn reappeared, he was an old, old man, as old as a man may
feel when his lady's attention wanders."
Joan colored and laughed, her eyes faintly mischievous, wholly
apologetic.
"Finn's youth," Kenny gallantly assured her, "was restored to him by
magic and surely there is magic in a woman's smile."
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