"How are you getting on?" he asked.
"Very well; very well indeed, considering my breakfast," Prather
responded unexpectedly. "I have done seventeen hundred words, to-day."
"Really?" Opdyke's accent concealed the fact that he had no idea
whether the record was great or small. Then he yielded to his
curiosity. "But what has your breakfast to do about it, Prather?"
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."
Reed smiled rather inscrutably to himself.
"Plenty of time, Prather," he said.
"No, no." Prather rose. "Best be about it soon. You'll find it makes
the greatest difference with you. Besides, as I say, it is time you
went about it, or you will get on your legs, the same lonely bachelor
you were when you went off them. And Doctor Keltridge says that you are
gaining fast."
Reed looked up suddenly, incisively.
"Did Doctor Keltridge say that?" he demanded.
"Well, not in those exact words; but that was the burden of his song,
the motif of his story, if I may speak so shoppishly." Again Prather's
hand sought his mustache. "It is quite evident to everybody, Opdyke,
that you are on the gain."