"Come and see me without delay. I have got a—
"Eternally,
"Ralph."
"O, yes!" said I, laughing; "I left out a word. I meant to have said, 'I have got an idea.'"
"Humph! I thought it was a colic."
Mr. Barescythe had left a host of editorial duties in the middle and busiest time of the day, expecting to find me lying at the point of death, and was quite out of humor because I was not.
There is something extremely human in Barescythe.
"Criticus," I spoke as deliberately as the subject would allow, "I am going to write a novel."
This unfortunate avowal was the rose-leaf which caused the cup of his indignation to overflow.
"If it had been a case of cholera," commenced Barescythe, with visible emotion, "or the measles, or the croup, or the chicken-pox—if you had broken your thigh, spine, or neck, I wouldn't have complained. But a novel—"