Goldnagels, on the
ground floor, these two women were the doctor's only fellow lodgers, for
Mister Garland, of the wanderlust, had not visited his family since the
day in October, and so hardly counted. In the early weeks of the
doctor's tenancy, which began only last September, he had walked three
times a day to the Always Open Lunch Room, known among the baser sort as
the Suicide Club, and had then become possibly the most discriminating
judge of egg-sandwiches in all the city. Later, having made the better
acquaintance of the Garlands, he had rightly surmised that the earnings
derivable from a medical boarder might not be unacceptable in that
quarter. The present modus vivendi, then worked out, had proved most
satisfactory to all, from both the financial and the social viewpoints.

"I wisht I had a red satin dress, and a necklace all pearls, and was
going to the party, too, and had a dark sad-faced man with a mustache
and a neye-glass engaged to me, like a count. I wisht I was a Lady,"
said Kern.

"You don't need a red satin dress to be a lady."

"It'd come easier, kinder, with the dress, Mr. V.V. And I wisht I had a
writin'-desk, too. And a founting pen."

"Lawk's sakes, Kern, an' I've asked you a hundred times what would you
do with a writin'-desk, now?"

"Mommer, I'd set at it."

"An' what time you got for settin', I'd like to know? Fairy-dreamin'
again!"

"An' I'd keep notes in it in the pigeonholes. Like it says in my
Netiquette."

"You don't get no notes."

Kern was silenced by her mother's addiction to actuality, but presently
said: "I'd get notes if I was a lady, wouldn't I, Mr. V.V.?"

The doctor assured her that she would, and that all these things would
come some day. He sighed inwardly and wondered, not for the first time,
where the link could possibly lie between the matter-of-fact mother and
the strange child of fancy. There was nothing to do but attribute the
phenomenon to Mister, the whimsical knight of the open road. The boarder
asked what he should bring Kern from the party: he feared they wouldn't
have writing-desks, it not being at all a literary set. The girl thought
a rapturous moment and then asked could she have three of them
marrowglasses, all in curly white paper.

Vivian promised, and departed on his duties. First there was a call at
the Miggses' down the block, where the little boy Tub lay with scarlet
fever, very sick; and then there was his seven o'clock office hour for
w