"Cally," she continued, "wrote a good deal about her mother's being dropped from the officers of the a.s.sociated Charities. Well it's too bad, of course, but somebody's got to take the blow, V.V., and I imagine it's going about where it belongs. Serves her right, I say, for the sort of mother she's always been, doing her best to educate all the decent feeling out of Cally, and then trying to break her when she was doing the best thing she ever did in her life. In fact--I don't want to brag, but I expect the talk I've spread around town has had a good deal to do with the way things have gone. She married mother's brother and all that," said Hen, "but I detest and despise her and always have."

V.V. burst out laughing, and Hen observed: "Well, I'm glad I said that.

It's the first smile I've seen from you this month."

She stood by the old secretary, looking down at him, and she thought what a hard life he had down here, and how his face looked too refined for this so practical world....

"Now, V.V., really," said she, "why can't you leave your work to this man Finnegan for just a week and pack your little bag and run down to Aunt Rose Hopwood's farmette--really? Tee Wee and Loo are there, and everybody'll be delighted to have you. In the open air all day, sleep ten hours every night, eat your blessed head off. No mosquitoes. No malaria--"

"I can't go now, Hen. It's impossible. Thank you just the same."

He spoke quite irritably, for him, and Hen, having had this subject up more than once before, desisted and turned to go.

"Well, take some sort of care of yourself, V.V.," she said from the door. "Don't be a goose. And, by the way, be very gentle with your little friend Corinne. You know she thinks you put up the moon."

V.V. had meant to be gentle with Corinne, but in the light of this remark he resolved to be gentler still. He sat for ten minutes in abstraction after Henrietta had gone; and then, rising abruptly, picked up the chart, went down the long hall, pushed aside the light green curtain that swung in front of a door, and pa.s.sed into the sick-room.

Kern lay alone with her geraniums, awning, whirring fan, and other ladylike appurtenances. Mr. V.V. sat down by the white iron bed and introduced a thermometer into her mouth. He possessed himself of her wrist, took out his silver watch and presently wrote something on the chart. He took out the thermometer and again jotted upon the chart. Then he gave the patient two tablespoonfuls of peptonoids. All this in silence. And then Kern said in a whimpering little voice:

"Mr. V.V., I'm so _hongry_."

"I know it, poor child. Just a little more patience now: you're going to begin to get better right away, and before you know it you'll be sitting down to the finest dinners that ever you popped into your mouth. Ring the bell and order what you like--stuff, stuff, stuff--banquets all day long. And that reminds me," said he, hurrying away from this too toothsome subject--"your holiday, as soon as you feel strong enough to travel. It's high time we were making pretty definite plans about that.

The question is, what sort of place do you think you'd like to go to?"

"Oh!... Do you mean--any place--go to _any_ place I like?"

"Any place in the world," replied Mr. V.V., the magnificent.

Kern thought for some time, her eyes on the window, and then said:

"I'd like to go to some place where there's mountains and a sea." She added, as if to soften the baldness of her specifications, the one word: "Like."

Mr. V.V. thought of Marathon, which on the whole didn't promise to suit.

He was visited with an ingenious idea, viz.: that Kern should go to no less than two places on her convalescent tour, one containing Mountains, the other containing a Sea! And so it was settled to the general satisfaction....

"Only hurry up and get well," said the tall doctor, "or you'll find the crowds gone from Atlantic City before you get there."

He had risen, but paused, looking down at the flushed little face in which the sunken dark eyes looked bigger than ever. Thoughts of himself were in his mind; and they were not pleasant thoughts.

"Kern," said he--for he had by now fallen into the family habit, abandoning the too stately Corinne--"suppose you were absolutely well, and had a thousand dollars, what would you do for yourself with it?"

It was a game well calculated to interest the little girl even in the listlessness and apathy of fever. Kern spoke first of duck, of French fried potatoes and salads rich with mayonnaise; then, hurrying on with increasing eagerness, of taking a steamer to Europe and buying her and mommer Persian clo'es....

Her medical adviser was obliged to check these too exciting flights.

"I mean more as a--as an occupation," he explained. "You know, of course, you've bunched your last cheroot. I was wondering what sort of nicer work you would like to fit yourself for--later on?"

Kern boggled a good deal over the answer to this, but finally got it out.

"What I'd truly like to be, Mr. V.V., if I could, is a writer, sort of."

"Oh!... Yes, yes--a writer! Well, that's very nice. A very nice occupation--writing."

The child was encouraged to go on. Staring at him with her grave investigatory eyes, she said, quite timidly:

"Mr. V.V., do you think I could _ever_ be an eppig poet, sir?... Like Homer the Blind Bard, y' know?"

Mr. V.V.'s encouraging smile became a little fixed. Yet there came nothing of a smirk into it, nothing the least bit superior.... Was this the explanation of the little girl's odd yearning toward pens and desks?

How came she to revere the Bard, where even to hear his name? Was it possible that Mrs. Garland's changeling had a spark in her, a magic urging her on?...

"Epic poet, is it?" said he aloud, cheerily. "Oh, I daresay something of the sort can be arranged. No harm in having a try anyhow! First thing, of course, is to get a good education...."

And he spoke of the High School, when Kern got back from her trip, with a little brushing-up, first, perhaps, under his personal supervision....

And next morning, when Kern's temperature stood down a whole degree at nine o'clock, these great plans seemed to come nearer at a bound. That day the Dabney House drew a long breath and smiled. Miss Masters was even more confident than Vivian that the hard corner had been turned. So the verdict went to Hen c.o.o.ney, who telephoned from Saltman's; and so it went to Jem Noonan, who was to be found waiting in front of the Dabney House every evening in these days, silently biting a Heth Plantation Cheroot, which he smoked because Kern made them, though secretly preferring the White River brand, made by the Trust. A great capacity for waiting had Jem. And that was the afternoon also that Doctor mysteriously vanished from his office before four o'clock, having left no word where he could be reached with his office-boy, Mrs. Garland; and was still out when O'Neill called at quarter to six, to talk about his factory law....

Next day, these novel excitements continued. For when Corinne Garland first opened her eyes that morning, they fell at once upon an imagined wonder out of fairyland. There it stood close to her bed's head, shining gloriously in the early sun, looking, oh, so real.... Kern lay extremely still, gazing wide-eyed: for well she knew the way of dreams, how you forgot and moved a little, and then it all winked out. But after a time, when It did not stir or dance about at all, there came to her a desperate courage, and she stretched out a trembling little hand. And lo, the hand encountered a solid unmistakable. And then Kern gave a great gasping Oh, and sat up in bed; and presently, being very weak, she began to cry, she was so happy.

It really was the prettiest Writing-Desk in the world, a desk for a d.u.c.h.ess's boudoir, all made of polished rosewood, and standing tall and graceful on four curving legs. It had an astounding lid, this Writing-Desk had; that you either locked up or let down; and when you let it down the lid had a shining slab of plate gla.s.s all screwed on, thus becoming the loveliest place to write on that you could well imagine. And the inside parts of the Desk were running over with delightful things, note-paper and envelopes, and pads and pencils, and new white blotting-paper and--true as true, dull black, with the cutest little silver belt--a beautiful Founting Pen. Inside also were pigeonholes of the best quality, like in the Netiquette. And in one of the pigeonholes there lay, sure enough, a note; not, indeed, from a mustached count with a neyegla.s.s, but from one who perhaps seemed not less of the purple to the fevered little buncher.

This note was written in the best jokey vein throughout, beginning, "Miss Corinne Garland, City--Dear Madam," and signed, "Your most obliged and obedient servant, Writing-Desk."...

It had been the intention of Mr. V.V. to call personally at the sick-room before breakfast, to see how Kern liked the arrival and appearance of Writing-Desk. But Miss Masters frustrated him at the door, saying that the child's heart was set upon conveying her thanks by formal note, and she had worried and fretted so over being refused that it seemed best to give her her way, particularly as she did not seem so well to-day. And in his disappointment over these tidings, the doctor presently forgot the desk entirely.

However, Kern's note arrived in the office an hour later, through the Kindness of Miss Masters, as the envelope advised. Mr. V.V. suspended a sentence to one of his sick in the middle to read it:

MY DEAR DR. VIVIAN:

Oh, Mr. V.V., how can I ever thank you for given me this lovely Writen Desk. I greatly appreciate your kind gift. Just putten my hands on it makes me so happy, I could cry, oh the soft feel this Pretty wood has got to it.

Your kind thought of me at this time has indeed pleased me.

One is never so appreciative of the thought of one's friends, if I can call you my Friend, Mr. V.V., as when one lies in pain upon a sickbed, th'o I have no pain. It's the lovlyest sweetest dearest Desk ever was Mr. V.V., and how can me and Mommer ever make up for all you done for us. I don't know. I have every hope for a speedy change for the better in my condition, and I never dreamed Id' have a Ladys Writen Desk truly, or haven one would make me oh so Happy. My first note, dear Dr. Vivian, goes to you.

With repeated thanks for your considerate thought of me during my illness, believe me, with kind remembrances,

Yours very cordially,

Your faithful friend CORINNE.

The young man distributed mental italics as he read. He detected at sight the footprints of the Netiquette and Complete Letter Writer. But he did not smile once as he read and reread the odd little mosaic, and folded it at last and put it away in a pigeonhole of its own. No, his stabbing thought was only, Why didn't I do it all long ago?... Why?...

And similar things he thought next morning, and the next and next. For Kern did not get well, no matter what the calendar said, no matter how loyally Writing-Desk stood at her elbow to serve her, as It had said in the Note. Her morning temperature shot up a degree again, and there it stood day after day, and would not go down. Kern obviously grew thinner and weaker. And there came a day when the President of the Settlement a.s.sociation, Mr. Stewart Byrd, came in person to the Dabney House before ten o'clock, and sent all the workmen away. He said there must be no noise about the place that day....

That relapse pa.s.sed, but no one could say what a day might bring forth.

The young doctor looked back over the past; he bowed beneath the burden that he felt upon him. However, due credit must be given to his friend Samuel O'Neill for a.s.sisting him to bring his sober meditations to a focus.

In these days O'Neill, having got his stiff factory law drafted, was becoming concerned with the problem of landing it on the statute-books.

The complexion of the incoming legislature, which met in January, promised to be conservative; and the Commissioner, breathing threatenings and slaughter against the waist-coated interests which had so flouted his warnings last winter, had decided that a preliminary press campaign would be needed--beginning, say, November 1st--to arouse public opinion to the needs of reform. The lively "Chronicle," the "labor paper," offered s.p.a.ce for a series of contributed articles from the Commission office, always provided that "hot stuff" only was furnished, by which was meant vigorous, if not libelous, a.s.saults upon the existing order.

Now it became the earnest wish of Commissioner O'Neill that these hot-stuff articles should be written for him by his friend V.V., of the reformatory pa.s.sions and the pen of a ready writer. And, the whole subject having been discussed several times in an indecisive sort of way, O'Neill one night whacked out a jagged argument.