The little novelist settled himself more deeply in his chair, and caressed his small mustache with two small hands which totally failed to conceal the smile behind them.
"I was hoping you would ask the question, my dear fellow. It's a new idea of mine, and, really, I am not at all ashamed of it. Clever, I call it, do you know," he added, with rising enthusiasm. "In the old days, when I was a callow beginner, I used to eat at random. Deuce knows the messes it kicked up, too, with my plots! Now I know better. I fit my meals, my breakfast above all, to the kind of chapter I have ahead of me. When I need to be analytic, I eat beans and certain cereals, and drink black coffee very hot and very fast. Before a love scene, I eat curried things or else put on the stronger kinds of sauces. For the final parting of the lovers, I even have used both. And then for tragedy, for utter grief, I take to cold things, cold things rather underdone, if possible. My wife is a great help to me, in all this planning. She admires my work tremendously; most women do, and she has helped me work the theories out." Suddenly he brought himself up with a round turn that left him facing Opdyke. "Opdyke," he said abruptly; "you ought to have a wife."
"But I don't write any novels," Reed protested, a trifle blank at the swift attack.
"No; but you may. You've had experiences, and you've any amount of time," Prather argued kindly. "I'd help you get a start, you know. And then, besides, you would find it so very comforting."
"The novel?"
"No; the wife. She could take Ramsdell's place, you know."
Reed chuckled.
"She would need to be a lusty Amazon, Prather, if she took the contract of lugging me about."
But Prather waved his hand in circles that were intended to be explanatory.
"Not a bit, Opdyke; not a bit," he said, with effervescent cheer. "It would take you a little while to get her, don't you know; and, by that time, you'd be up and about, really almost as well as ever. And there are things, you know, things about your buttons and your meals, that nobody but a wife can ever manage properly. Take my advice, Opdyke, the advice of a veteran, and go about it. Then, when you're on your feet again, you'll have her ready to look out for you."