"Can't we eat in the grill?" asked Whitaker. "It's raining." Kenny regarded him with a look of pained intelligence.
"Then," said Whitaker, "I'll go out and buy something. I'd rather eat in the studio. What'll I get?"
"If you want a rarebit," he added, "we have some cheese."
He was still searching excitedly for the cheese when Whitaker returned.
"Reynolds," he flung out vindictively, "is positively the most unreliable dealer I know. He's erratic and irresponsible. A man may work himself to death and wait in the grave for his money. Do you wonder poor Blakelock met his doom through the cupidity of laggard dealers? Here am I on the verge of God knows what from overwork--"
Whitaker spared him disillusion. Painting with Kenny was an occupation, never work. When it slipped tiresomely into the class of work and palled, he threw it aside for something more diverting.
"The cheese in all probability," suggested Whitaker mildly, "wouldn't be under the piano. Or would it? And don't bother anyway. I took the liberty of buying an emergency wedge while I was out."
Kenny wiped his forehead in amazed relief and piously thanked God he hadn't wasted his appetite on middle-aged cakes.
"If you hadn't come when you did," he said, "I'd likely had to eat 'em, thanks to Reynolds. Now I'll send 'em up to H. B." He peered disgustedly into the bag and removed an irrelevant ace of spades. Its hibernation there seemed for an instant to annoy him as well it might. There had been a furore in whist about it barely a week before. Then he used it irresponsibly for an I.O.U. and impaled it upon a strange looking spike that seemed to pinion a heterogeneous admission of petty debt.
Together they made the rarebit. Whitaker waited with foreboding for the storm to break. But for some reason, though he was constrained and impatient and feverishly active, Kenny avoided the subject of Brian. He lost poise and patience all at once, pushed aside his plate and challenged Whitaker with a look.
"Whitaker," blustered Kenny, "where's Brian?"
"No. Brian's left New York. He's driving somebody's car. And I found the job for him through my paper. When he has money enough he plans to tramp off into God's green world of spring to get himself in trim. Says he's stale and tired and thinking wrong. In the fall he's going abroad for me and that, Kenny, is about all I can tell you."