“Has it ever struck you,” said Vera Durmot to Clovis, “that one might make a comfortable income by compiling a local almanac, on prophetic lines, like those that the general public buy by the half million?”
“An income, perhaps,” said Clovis, “but not a comfortable one. The prophet has proverbially a thin sort of time in his own country, and you would be too closely mixed up with the people you were prophesying about to be able to get much comfort out of the job. If the man who foretells tragic happenings for the Crowned Heads of Europe had to meet them at luncheon parties and tea-fights every other day of the week he would not find his business a comfortable one, especially towards the last days of the year, when the tragedies were getting overdue.”
“I should sell it just before the New Year,” said Vera, ignoring the suggestion of possible embarrassment, “at eighteenpence a copy, and get a friend to type it for me, so that every copy I sold would be clear profit. Everyone would buy it out of curiosity, just to see how many of the predictions would be falsified.”