"Yes. He asked me if I had heard that you were growing very nervous lately. That you—Well, never mind the rest of it. In the time of it, though, I supposed that it was his novelist's imagination that had got to work. Now I know it was only another manifestation of the almighty Ramsdell."
"He is almighty, Dolph. I'd be badly off without him."
"So I observe." Dolph chuckled. "At first, I was as afraid of him as if he had been a country undertaker looking for a job; but I'm slowly coming to the belief that the fellow is an actual wag. Really, you'd be badly off without him. He'll stay on, of course?"
"As long as I can keep him. He informs me daily that he'll see me through it till I die. From all indications, though, I'm a good deal more afraid of his dying, first."
"Rot!" Dolph remarked cheerily. "What you need, Opdyke, is to forego thoughts of dying, and get busy."
"What about?" Reed asked a little bitterly. "My present environment isn't particularly fitted for the strenuous life."
Dolph shut his two hands, side by side, around his ankle. When he spoke, though, his voice was unconcerned.
"Not unless you take your profession into bed with you," he remarked.
From behind Opdyke's courteous smile for a rather dull joke, there gathered interest, comprehension, eagerness.
"Dennison, you mean something or other, out of that," he said, after a little pause.